


Call Up The Devil

by sirsparklepants



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aftermath of Mad Science, Billy Hargrove Lives, Canon-Typical Horror, Conspiracy, M/M, Monster Hunters, Post-Season/Series 03, Road Trips, Slow Burn, Small Towns, The Upside Down, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2020-11-26 21:28:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20937026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirsparklepants/pseuds/sirsparklepants
Summary: "Did you really think you could call up the devil and ask him to behave?" - The X-FilesStrange things are happening again, and not just in Hawkins. Small towns all over America are showing signs of Upside Down infestation, courtesy of Dr. Brenner. Someone has to go deal with it all - someone who knows what they're getting themselves into. These days, that's Steve and Billy. They're the closest thing to professional monster hunters anyone is going to get. And they're going to bring Brenner and his experiments down - unless, of course, he finds them first.





	1. Tiffin, Ohio

**Author's Note:**

> After I finished In a Day or Two, I decided that for a show full of monsters, my ST fic was decidedly lacking in monster fighting. This fic - a homage to The X Files and early Supernatural - is my way of remedying that. Also, like, it's Halloween season, so, seasonally appropriate! *jazz hands*
> 
> This story is not nearly as stiffly plotted as my last one was - I know where I'm going, but I also want a more episodic storytelling style, so things are more like beats to hit than firmly outlined chapters. As a result, updates will probably come slower, but they are coming! This is just too much damn fun to leave alone. 
> 
> All small towns featured in this fic, aside from Hawkins for obvious reasons, are real small towns. Either they're ones my friends told me about when I asked what are some good small towns to be haunted, or they're ones I passed through briefly on a road trip and liked the look of. Tiffin, Ohio is the former. They really did have an abandoned glass factory in the early 80s, although in late '85 it was partially demolished. I've changed that for obvious reasons. The radio program mentioned is Hearts of Space, also a real program. It started out in California in the 70s, but reached national syndication in the early 80s. I have a whole huge box of tapes of the 80s programs, and it's fantastic wind-down music. I like to imagine Billy listening to it late at night to stay calm.

"It's got to be the glassworks," Steve said, hunched over the microfiche machine.

"It's not gonna be the fucking glassworks, the factory has only been shut down for six years," Billy said, pen cap in his mouth as he flicked through a massive book of county records. "Our guy has been active since at least 1970."

"Other places," Steve pointed out, as patiently as he could. "Not here, necessarily. He needs space. He could spread out there."

"What he _needs _is fucking skilled assistance," Billy said, leaning his chair back on two legs like an asshole. "Even if he's got some sponsorship, he can't do all the work by himself. He's got to be at the university."

Steve threw his hands up in the air. "They don't have to set up at the university to have the master’s students or whatever work for him!" he said.

Billy snorted. "What, a bunch of soft-handed nerds trying to get their degree are gonna go to some abandoned factory for work every day and not gonna talk?" he asked. "Nah. No way. The university is the only building that has space and doesn't have shift workers going in and out all the time. It's gotta be there."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Well, the university is full of people, and the glassworks isn't. Why don't we check it out first, just to save some time and scamming? If you're right, you've only wasted an hour of your time. If I'm right, we don't have to do the whole phone circus with Hopper and Nancy and Jonathan. We can jump right in to kicking monster ass and collecting information. No suits required."

Billy bit his lip. Despite how good he looked in them, Steve knew that putting on a suit was one of his least favorite parts of the prelim work they had to do. And the backroom of the county library was getting awfully dull. "Okay, you win," he said. He started shoving his notes at Steve to go into his backpack. "We'll check out the factory. When there's nothing, you can't complain about my tapes the whole way back to Hawkins."

"When we find whatever's wrong in this town, you're buying me the nicest steak Tiffin has to offer," Steve said.

"You're on," Billy said.

* * *

Their partnership had a rhythm now. It hadn't always. It had started, as most things did in Hawkins, strangely.

For months after that horrible summer, Steve was at loose ends. His parents were disappointed at his shitty jobs - before Robin's good word at the Family Video, he'd bounced between a few odd jobs, some more "respectable", but it was hard to keep a decent job when you woke up screaming in the middle of the night and spent half your shifts twitching when someone came up behind you too suddenly. He was on the verge of being kicked out of the family home, and he didn't make enough to afford his own apartment. He saw Russians and demodogs and demogorgons around every corner. Keith was disappointed at him and Robin was back in school. Joyce Byers had one foot out of Hawkins, looking for jobs and real estate elsewhere, and most of the kids were moping about it. But then Hopper had thrown him a lifeline.

"Bauman brought me some reports," he said, standing in front of Steve with a sheaf of slightly crumpled papers in his hand. The scars his Upside-Down experience had left him with were still livid on his arm, but he didn't make any move to cover them when Steve's eyes involuntarily fell on them. "Hawkins might not be the only place weird shit is happening. You up for a little investigating?"

Steve had been. The research, slow as it went for him, had captured all of his attention. He'd always known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that things weren't really over, that they'd get worse. They always had before. This meant that he wasn't blindsided. He could actually do something and not just try to herd kids and get his face smashed in. He started turning up to work on time. His dreams were filled with printed pages more often than not. He scribbled notes while he sat at the Family Video counter waiting for customers. And after a couple of weeks, he had enough pieced together to bring back to Hopper.

"I'm impressed," he said, paging through the neatly-organized and color-coded notes. Steve might have gone a little overboard, used all the tricks Nancy tried to teach him. They didn't do shit in high school, but it turned out that if he actually cared about what he was presenting, it turned out a lot better. 

Hopper's eyebrows raised as he went through the information. "Real impressed, kid," he said. "Looks like you have an idea of where we should check out, even. Feel like a trip to West Virginia?"

"What?" Steve asked, a little shocked.

Hopper grimaced. "I can't leave Hawkins, and even if I could, I'm not in any shape to do chasing after Upside Down bullshit any more," he said, curling the damaged arm a little closer to him. "But we need boots on the ground, to make sure that it really is what it seems like. You're good under pressure and you know what you might be dealing with. So, you want to take a little vacation?"

Steve bit his lip. Keith wouldn't be happy about him taking a long weekend, but Steve had been covering some extra shifts because he worked better at the video counter than in the echoing silence of his parents' house. He could probably swing a couple of days off. "Sure," he said, firming up his stance.

"Good," Hopper said. "But there's just one thing. You need some backup, and you're not gonna like who I'll pick."

"What do you mean?" Steve asked.

Turns out the Mindflayer had left Billy with a few gifts when he left him, somehow alive, on the floor of Starcourt Mall, and El had been trying to help him learn how to use them. Hopper thought this little field trip was a good way for Billy to test them out. Steve, obviously, disagreed.

He'd known, in the kind of secondhand way he knew a lot of the kids' gossip, that Billy had been out of the hospital for several months, and subdued but snappy most of that time. He'd apologized while he was out of his mind on drugs and pain, apparently, but it was even odds whether he meant it sober. He was looking for something to do after Starcourt too, it seemed like, and just like Steve, monster fighting fit the bill.

In the end, although he argued, Steve trusted Hopper's judgement. So he and Billy drove off to West Virginia, to find the remnants of one of Brenner's early experiments lurking in the walls of the high school. And Steve… didn't hate working with him, abrasive attitude and all. It helped that Billy took the monster's head off right before it would have bitten off Steve's. So when the next bit of information came in, they went off together again.

* * *

The first sign that something was wrong at the factory was its surprising cleanliness. Steve and Billy had explored probably more than their fair share of abandoned industrial sites since they started working together, and if they'd been left for more than a month, things started to get dirty. Graffiti appeared. Glass was broken. The glassworks… didn't look like that. Oh, it had a veneer of dirt and dust, and it certainly hadn't been maintained, but it hadn't been vandalized either. And the gravel of the parking lot was much more smooth and even than Steve would expect from something left to the elements for years. 

He looked at Billy and raised his eyebrows. Billy rolled his eyes, but Steve noticed him pat at the metal car antenna he'd salvaged from a junkyard and kept in his back pocket for jobs where bystanders might catch a look at him. Steve made sure his own hunting knife, strapped on his forearm and safely covered with his shirtsleeve, slid easily from the sheath as they crept towards the building. 

Inside, things were just as suspicious. Not noisy or anything - in fact, when the doors shut, the distant sounds of road noise and animal sounds were completely cut off. A factory didn't need soundproofing like that even when it was active. There were a few broken windows, but just a few, and the smell inside wasn't dusty, dirty, or even stuffy. No sign of animals or the homeless population. 

Via a series of gestures and eyebrow raises, Steve and Billy split up the factory floor for searching. Anything they found would be loud enough to attract attention, but they didn't need to court it before they had to. Steve pointed his flashlight into corners, abandoning any with cobwebs or a thick layer of dust. Someone was clearly coming here regularly, and they weren't nearly as good at covering their footsteps as they thought they were. 

That fairly clean corner looked… weird, though. Steve crept closer, squinting at it. It might have been the imprint of the machinery that had stood there for ninety years, but he thought… 

He pulled on the hole just big enough for two fingers, and a section of the floor came up with it. Steve pointed his flashlight down into the squeaky clean, yet uninviting depths, and called over to Billy, "Here!" 

Billy's bootsteps were loud in the almost total quiet. Seeing his flashlight bounce through the shadows was unnerving. The big sigh he heaved when he caught sight of the trapdoor? Not so much. 

"Why is it always goddamn underground?" he muttered. "Just once I'd like a nice fucking high rise. Hell, I'd even take the top floor of a three-story house."

Steve winced, thinking about it. "I wouldn't," he said. "I keep getting thrown into walls. At least underground there's no windows to go out of."

Billy snorted. "No, just machinery to get impaled on," he said, gesturing at Steve's right leg, where they both knew a large round scar lay on his calf. "Well, once more unto the breach." He made to go down the shiny clean ladder. 

"Who says you're going first?" Steve said. "I found the trapdoor."

"Yeah, and you're the one with the butterfingers, too," Billy said. "I can catch you."

"Maybe I could catch _you_," Steve said, a little sulky. You dropped your bat with a monster coming at you one time and you never heard the end of it. 

Billy just leveled him with a look. He'd lost a lot of bulk after his possession, but he was still solidly muscled. Steve wasn't so bad himself, but he'd never match Billy for strength and they both knew it. Instead of answering, Billy started down the ladder. 

Steve could have argued, but what was the use? He'd been right about the factory, and that made Billy cranky. He followed Billy down to the tune of a steady stream of internal bitching and moaning. 

The tunnels beneath the factory were nothing like the ones Steve had once explored with the kids. They were simply an extension of the metal and grating above, just cleaner. The air smelled, just faintly, of a strong disinfectant. There was no need for goggles or improvised gas masks here, but Steve still felt naked without them in close quarters like this.

Billy didn't like it either. Steve could see the tight line of his shoulders from here, the stiff way his neck swiveled. There was no sound but the whooshing of the ventilation and exposed pipes above them and the muted shushing of their feet against the poured concrete floor.

After a few hundred feet, they came to a bend in the tunnel and then a door. It had a small square window in it, like the kind classroom doors did, and Steve exchanged a glance with Billy. Dark as it was, if someone was inside that room, they'd seen the bobbing of their flashlights and knew they were coming. Billy gestured at Steve, and he flattened himself against the wall, drawing his knife. They were way beyond plausible deniability now.

Billy tried the handle, but it was locked. He rattled it a couple of times, then pressed his ear to the door to see if he could hear anyone responding. Probably not, though, since he knelt down and pulled a hairpin out of his pocket to start picking the lock.

Steve tried to take deep breaths. Every little click of the tumblers sounded loud as glass breaking in the suspicious quiet. He couldn't convince himself everyone had gone home for the day. He squeezed his fingers on the hilt of the knife, tight, then released them, then did it again, and strained his ears to hear anything past the thundering of his heartbeat and the metallic sounds from beside him.

With a final click, the handle turned smoothly, and Billy stood up before throwing the door open, car antenna at the ready. No screaming scientist with a vial of unknown substance or soldier with a gun greeted them. It was just a room with messy drifts of paper on three different desks and one metal window guard, like the kind Steve had rolled down over Scoops Ahoy when he closed except solid. He didn't waste time on the swoop of dread that window evoked in him. He turned to one of the desks instead.

"What were you saying about softhanded nerds?" Steve asked, quietly, as he paged through the information there. He didn't understand three-fourths of it, but that was what Nancy and Jonathan were for: sorting through the data. Steve was just muscle and he knew it. Still, enough of the terms were familiar from half-remembered science class lectures that he knew this wasn't just another defense contractor's work.

Billy grunted, and at first Steve thought he wouldn't answer him. "Guess people can still surprise me," he said eventually. "Bring your bag over here, we've got a lot of this crap to load up before we find whatever freaky shit is waiting for us behind that window." His tone was matter-of-fact, but his eyes flicked away from it just as fast as Steve's did. 

"Is that the voice of experience or like, a _feeling_?" Steve asked, wriggling his fingers like he always did. It annoyed the shit out of Billy, so it was worth keeping doing.

"If it was a _feeling_, you'd know about it, pretty boy," Billy said. "We've just missed all the freaky shit so far, so it's gotta be lurking somewhere. We're too unlucky."

Billy was, unfortunately, right. Steve carefully put the papers he was handed into his bag, then put it on and secured the straps. He didn't think they'd be getting out of this place without running.

They both pressed themselves flat to either side of the window before Billy flung it up, weapons at the ready. There was still no noise, and after a beat, Steve slowly turned to shine his flashlight through the glass.

Something… gleamed back at him. Whatever was in there was an oozing mass of shadow that his eyes didn't want to look at. When they went up to the far corners of the ceiling, he could have sworn he saw three mismatched eyes, or a set of sharp teeth, somewhere in there, but when he forced himself to deal with the dizzy, headachey feeling of looking at it head-on, they disappeared. In fact, in the face of his flashlight, whole bits of the thing were beginning to disappear.

Steve swallowed, dryly. His throat clicked. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His head hurt. So did his eyes.

"What the _fuck_," Billy whispered from beside him. He sounded pained. "What the hell are they doing down here." It wasn't a question.

"I don't want to know," Steve whispered back. He didn't want to look at this thing any more, but he wanted to turn his back to it even less. His gaze dropped down, involuntarily, below the window. Then he blinked.

"Billy," he whispered urgently. "I think. I think it's coming through the wall."

He should probably move, he thought. But whatever part of his brain was responsible for conveying the urgency of survival to his legs was offline right now, devastated by the undulating… anti-light of that thing.

"Shit," Billy whispered back. Steve couldn't hear him move either. There was a tendril of shadow-creature sliding towards the toe of his shoe. Steve didn't want it to touch him, but he didn't know what he could do about it. He couldn't move.

"Steve," Billy said again, but it sounded louder. No, it sounded closer, but Billy hadn't moved. Was he - was he in Steve's head? He couldn't do that all the time, or even most of the time. Dimly, Steve was aware that that was a sign things were kind of fucked. But whatever he was feeling about that was cut off from him the same way his ability to move his legs was.

Then there was a sensation like somebody had snapped a rubber band on the inside of his wrist, but like. Inside his brain. Steve yelped and flinched, and then became aware that he was moving. And that, oh yeah, this was _fucking terrifying_ and they should be running right about now.

"Shit," he hissed, and turned tail, grabbing Billy by the wrist. That seemed to work the same way whatever Billy had done inside his head had, and his partner shuddered and came to life under his hands.

"Let's go!" he said, but Steve was way ahead of him. Two steps ahead. Whatever, he was headed for the ladder before Billy finished speaking.

Fuck, the tunnel hadn't seemed this long on the way in, or this full of looming shadows. Steve tried not to look anywhere but at the faint gleam of the ladder at the end of this. Any of the shadows bouncing away from his flashlight could be that thing. Upside Down creatures could sometimes appear in walls and ceilings. He knew that from experience. The only way he'd know would be if he stopped dead again. 

Most of their shit was still in the car. No matter what he'd thought about the factory, Steve was sure this was just going to be an in and out scouting mission, and Billy had thought it would be even less than that. If they could just get there - 

Steve skidded to an abrupt halt, and not because he'd suddenly lost all motivation to move. In fact, all his motivation was put into reversing his sprint down the hall. He jerked back on Billy's arm, too.

"What -" Billy started to say, but then he stopped. He saw it too.

There was another shadow wrapping its way down the ladder. It was much smaller than the first, but where that one had just had the suggestion of teeth, or the idea of them in the corner of your eye, this one had a mouth like a freaky deep-sea creature: teeth as long as Steve's fingers, a double row of them in a wide jaw. 

It didn't have any eyes or anything Steve could make out, but that hadn't stopped the monsters before. It let out a rattling hiss, more like the sound of red-hot metal being plunged into water than anything a living animal would make, as it crept toward them.

Steve gripped his knife in a sweaty palm. His hands always fucking sweated when he was fighting monsters, like they had the first time he'd ever asked a girl to dance. It made gripping weapons a real bitch. Fortunately (he guessed) he had practice by now.

"_Hsssssst_ to you too, motherfucker," he said, spitting back at it like an angry cat. Then he ran at it straight on.

He wished he had his bat, because he wanted a little distance between him and those fucking teeth. But he knew enough about knife fighting to be sure that he could at least wound this thing enough that he and Billy could get to the car. He crouched down low and slashed at where its abdomen would be if it was a normal creature and not some unnatural mass of shadow with teeth.

His knife hit… nothing. Whatever the hell the monster was made up of, it could decide to be there, or not, at will. _That's not fucking fair_, Steve had time to think, before its teeth closed on the meat of his shoulder. 

He didn't scream. Screaming in the middle of a monster fight was fine if you were trying to intimidate them, but screaming while wounded was just asking for more attention than you could handle. He did let out a hiss and then, as the knife failed to hit the thing a second time while the teeth stayed lodged in him, a whine that was more frustration than anything. He barely felt it yet. He would later, when the adrenaline died down. Right now he felt the urge to pry the thing off him with his bare hands, even if he only had one of them. He dropped his knife and tried to yank the teeth out of his arm with his free hand.

Surprisingly, it worked. His hand got a grip on the thing enough to pry it loose, and it hissed again, clearly not wanting to go. Steve hissed back at it, because talking back to monsters was what he did now.

The thing was ripped from his grip, though, and slammed up against the far tunnel wall by an invisible force. Billy grabbed his uninjured shoulder and pulled. "Come the fuck on," he panted. Sweat stood out on his face, more than he'd ever sweated from a quick sprint like this. "We don't have time for you to play your little game of monster chicken." 

This was true. Steve had to get up the ladder before he started feeling the wound in his arm, for one thing. And who knew if these monsters were maddened by blood like some of the others? They ran for the ladder again.

This time they made it, but they didn't stop until they were out of the factory and into the dim Ohio dusk. The Camaro was still there - unlocked, because they needed a quick getaway too often to be in the habit of locking it for scouting - and they both slid in, panting, before Billy pulled it into gear so fast the gears whined in protest before spitting gravel up as they left the lot.

Steve checked the mirror anxiously. Nothing seemed to be following them yet. Maybe they lucked out and whatever those things were, they needed to stay underground. Metal didn't work, and Billy's powers weren't going to be enough to take out the big one. But when in doubt, fire did the trick every single time.

"Think we have enough explosives to take that whole place down or will we have to get more?" he asked Billy, pressing a hand to his wound.

Billy spared a quick glance at him. "Get the damn blanket, idiot, you're bleeding all over my car," he said. Steve rolled his eyes but pulled the blanket they kept for just this occasion, covered in suspicious stains (their blood, monster blood, mud, and engine grease, mostly) out of the backseat and against his arm.

"I think we'll have to do a controlled burn," Billy said, after he was satisfied Steve wasn't dripping blood everywhere anymore. "Place is too big. We'll bring it down on our own heads if we try to take the whole thing. I don't want to be buried alive."

"Point," Steve said. "Do we have blueprints so we know how to keep that from happening?" He'd become very familiar with the basics of demolition safety over the past nine months.

"The library does," Billy said. "But we gotta get your bleeding stopped first and get the papers secure. Maybe get some sleep. Make a real plan."

"Guess you might be right about that," Steve allowed. The pain was really starting to make itself known to him. It wasn't the worst wound he'd ever gotten, but it wasn't fun, either.

Billy grinned. His face was still sweaty, but he was starting to get some color back. Which was good, because Steve needed him steady to stitch him up. "I'm always right," he said, pulling the Camaro up to their motel room door.

"Oh yeah?" Steve asked. He contemplated his injured arm, the car door, the wound blanket, and the backpack, and how he was going to to coordinate all of them. "What about that time in Lexington?" 

"Which Lexington?" Billy asked, huffy but trying to hide it. He snatched the backpack up from between Steve's feet. 

"You know which fucking Lexington," Steve said, "or you wouldn't be so squirrely about it." Billy looked like he was about five seconds away from opening his door for him, too, so Steve hurried to get out before that could happen. He winced. The Camaro was good for fast getaways but shit for rolling out of wounded. 

"Squirrely?" Billy repeated, following him out of the car and pulling their very well equipped first aid kit out before they got in the room. "What are you, someone's fucking dad?" 

"You're avoiding the question," Steve said, as smug as he could be while clutching a murder blanket to an arm still steadily bleeding. "What about Lexington?" 

"Lexington was a fucking aberration," Billy muttered, unlocking the door since he had two functioning hands. "And it was months ago."

"Uh-huh," Steve said, following him in. He grinned when Billy turned to glare at him. 

"Wipe that smirk off your face, princess," he said. "And take your shirt off, unless you want me to cut it off. We gotta stitch you up." He went into the bathroom to wash up. 

Steve liked this shirt, and Mrs. Byers and Chief Hopper had both shown him some tricks about getting blood out and stitching up clothes, so he was fairly sure he could salvage it. Lucky for him, it buttoned up the front, or he was sure that Billy would be cutting it off. It still wasn't fun peeling it away from the wound. Steve tried not to look at the edges too closely. He didn't really like seeing the immediate aftermath of his encounters with the Upside Down.

He followed Billy into the bathroom and tossed his bloody shirt into the tub. He'd put it in to soak once they were done. Bathrooms were easier to clean the blood out of later. It was almost routine by now to sit on the closed lid of the toilet as he waited for Billy to prep all the supplies he'd need. Nancy, Hopper, and even Billy, in his own rough way, tended to yell at him for the way he went head-on up against monsters they knew nothing about. But that was what he was good at. Making people want to talk to him and charging head-on at monsters. Being a distraction for the real heavy hitters.

Billy clicked his tongue as he stared at the wound. "You've got crap in here, pretty boy," he said. "Gotta clear it out before I can stitch you up."

"Ugh," Steve said, but he turned so Billy could get at the wound better anyway.

"Don't 'ugh' me. You're the one who went running after some freaky shadow thing that we knew could go through walls." Despite his words, his hands on Steve's shoulder were gentle as he plucked threads of his shirt out of the wounds.

"The Demogorgon could go through walls, and we could hit that," Steve grumbled.

"One anecdote isn't data," Billy said, sounding exasperated.

"What does that mean?" Steve asked, turning his head to watch Billy's face.

"It means that every fucking little monster we fight has different rules, so if you took some time to figure out what they are, maybe you wouldn't have so many scars from my stitches all over you!" Billy said. He bit his lip, and outside the bathroom the air conditioner kicked on. Billy tried not to yell these days, but Steve knew he was one of the things that could always bring it out of him. He tried not to be proud.

"We don't always have time for that," Steve said, trying to sound calm when Billy was shoving hard bits of metal into a throbbing wound. "We had to get out of there before the big mind-fucking one showed up. Taking on the little one was a calculated risk."

Billy blew out a breath. "Whatever," he said, putting down the tweezers and washing his hands again. "Light me up a smoke, huh?" He picked up the needle and leaned down, his lips parted.

Steve tapped the pack and pulled out a Marlboro. The motions were so automatic that he started to put it towards his own lips before changing directions and slipping the filter between Billy's. His breath brushed Steve's fingertips before he pulled them away, fumbling with the Zippo sitting on the back of the toilet tank.

Billy closed his eyes as he breathed in, and then snorted the smoke out of his nose, cigarette clamped tight between his lips. Steve had set it to the side, so Billy could talk around it if he wanted to. He always had something to say while he was putting stitches in.

The iodine on the wound burned, but it was a familiar burn, and Steve clenched his good hand in the fabric of his jeans, breathing out slowly and evenly. Clenching the bad one would just put the muscle and skin in shitty alignment, and Billy would have to redo the stitches tomorrow.

"So what the fuck are we going to do, then?" he said, trying to distract himself from the drag and pull of the needle.

"Well, I can hit it," Billy mumbled around the cigarette. "So I guess I'm the monster distraction this time. Ash me, will you, before I get it in the wound."

Steve reached up with his good hand and plucked the cigarette loose. He misjudged the distance, though, and his middle finger caught on the chapped, warm skin of Billy's lower lip. He couldn't feel the breath this time, even though his fingers were closer - so close the middle finger was damp at the tip, far enough into Billy's mouth to catch the slightest drip of spit. Steve hurriedly drew his hand away, tapping the cigarette into the sink. Billy sighed when he pulled away, and took a deeper drag than before when Steve offered him the smoke again.

"What if there's more of them than just the two?" he asked, trying not to think of the feeling of Billy's lips on his hands. "Can you keep them all busy?"

Billy frowned. "Guess we'll find out," he said. No matter how much he worked with El, his powers weren't as predictable as hers. It was nice sometimes, like that once he was able to burn a monster to ash all on his own, and not so much others, when Steve ended up covering him with his bat as Billy knelt down, screaming because of how loud the creatures were inside his head.

"Well, my hands could touch them, even if my knife couldn't," Steve said. "So I could still be your backup if you really need. Ow!" That was to a particularly vicious stab of Billy's needle.

"You're fuckin' dreaming if you think you're fighting this shit with your bare hands, Harrington," Billy hissed. He pulled on the cigarette, hard.

Steve reached up to ash it again. "I was thinking fucking… leather or something," he said. "Not my hands. I don't want to get fucked up again." He shoved the cigarette back at Billy before he could answer.

"Sometimes I fucking wonder," Billy muttered. But he finished the rest of the stitching in silence. His hands were sure and warm on Steve, and despite the pain, it was almost… nice. Being touched like this. Like someone cared. The way they lived their lives now didn't leave much space for that.

"So you'll keep them busy," Steve said, while Billy bandaged him up. "Guess that means it's up to me to set up some charges."

Billy grinned at him. "Be nice to change it up, huh?" he asked. 

"Guess so," Steve said.

* * *

It was not fucking nice to change it up.

Steve liked being front and center to the monsters. He didn't like getting hurt, or having to stand still while he worried about the safety of whoever was behind him, but he liked actually being useful, liked knowing someone else was safe for as long as he kept the creatures occupied. Unlike every other fucking part of this whole Upside Down mess, that was something he could control, totally and completely. Things were a lot better if he was the only one getting hurt. He'd thought that since the tunnels.

It meant that this, though - running from load-bearing wall to support strut and back again while Billy engaged the monster with nothing but his mind - was fucking torturous. Steve could hear the crashes and clangs, Billy's shouting and grunts, and he even imagined he could hear his deep, panting breaths over his own. But he couldn't look. If he looked, he was going to try to run in and separate the monster from Billy with his bare hands.

The blueprints hadn't shown the secret basement lab, obviously, but Billy could tell from them which parts of the tunnels _weren't _load-bearing. Which meant that Steve had a tricky job: balancing enough explosive to bring down the place even if they'd guessed wrong on half the walls here with little enough of a fireball that he and Billy could get out without bringing the whole building down on their heads. It was the world's worst word problem in action, and it made his hands sweat. But he was almost done. Two more walls to go, and he and Billy could team up, lead the monster toward the exit with them, before they blew the furthest charges first and ran like hell.

Billy _shrieked_, a wild animal sound, as Steve placed the second-to-last one. His head whipped around involuntarily. He'd heard Billy make that sound on one other job, one involving a son a father had fed to a monster, and he'd hoped to never hear it again. Billy was standing, arms outstretched, pushing at the monster with his powers and his raw strength both. It was the big one this time, the one who could get inside your head, not the little one who'd bitten Steve. Billy was holding his own, but Steve could see the sheen of sweat on him from here, and the lines of strain on his face. He decided that the explosives he'd set down already were enough, and ran towards Billy and the monster.

He'd intended to shout something at Billy - "come on, we gotta go," maybe - but the closer he got to the mindbending one, the more his voice dried up. His stride slowed until he was coming towards Billy at a fast walk, and then a slow one. He'd tried to keep his focus on his partner and not the horror he was fighting, but he'd caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye, that strange, undulating not-shadow anti-light, and it was slowly paralyzing him again. But his hands still worked, and his arm. A bit. Steve pushed back against it. It was like moving through cold maple syrup, but he looked at the desperation on Billy's face, and he did it anyway.

Their fingers touched, and everything sped up again. Billy stopped shrieking, stopped straining. The monster pushed forward, but he was already moving, and so was Steve, their hands clenched tightly together. Billy made a sharp gesture behind them and something crashed.

"Hit it, Harrington," he hissed, and Steve wasn't sure whether it was in his head or out loud, but either way, they were almost at the ladder again, so he did.

The muffled series of booms started when he was halfway up the ladder, fingers hooked in Billy's beltloops because he was strangely reluctant to stop touching him. Billy laughed, something almost but not quite like that manic laugh he'd had that night at the Byers', so long ago now, and went faster. 

"Serves you right, you son of a bitch," Steve said, to more laughter from up above. He put some hustle into it. The building would start to wobble any minute now.

Sure enough, as they cleared the trapdoor, there was a whoosh of hot, dusty air from behind them, and an ominous creaking sound. "Fuck," he muttered. "Let's move it, Hargrove!"

Billy didn't answer, just yanked him by the hand again as they both pelted for the exit, the screaming of hot steel and crackling of brick and stone behind them.

They made it into the Camaro just before parts of the structure started to collapse for real, and Steve laughed, high and nervous and relieved.

"Think that'll get rid of that weird-ass thing?" he asked, as Billy peeled out fast from the parking lot for the second time in twenty-four hours.

"Oh, I'm sure of it," Billy said. His grin had teeth in it. He got a special joy destroying the real monsters, the unreality things that they sometimes got when the experiments hadn't been run on people instead. "Let's get the fuck out of here before someone starts investigating."

"Think we can make it back to Hawkins before sunrise?" Steve asked, looking at Billy sidelong.

"Who the fuck do you think I am?" Billy asked, mock-insulted. "Pick a tape, Harrington. Any one of 'em, since you never got your damn steak."

Steve rolled his eyes. "I'm still picking from your tapes," he pointed out. "Not really fair." Still, he rummaged through the sturdy shoebox Billy kept under the seat.

Billy grunted. "Next time we get to a big city, you get to pick one tape to add to the collection," he said, kind of grudgingly. Steve grinned at him. As a reward, he picked one of the recorded tapes that Max and Robin took turns making for Billy, this space music show out of California he liked to wind down to after a fight.

"_Music on this program is by Michael Sterns, Harold Budd, Danna and Clement, Richard Burmer, Giles Reaves, and Johann Sebastian Bach. It's a tribute to the dark energies of Scorpio, a reminder of the vast power of the earth, and the fragility of the life it supports_," the steady-voiced announcer said on the tape, and Billy's grin dropped into a slightly more sane smile.

"Maybe one day you'll grow some taste after all," he said, and swung out on the highway, headed for Indiana.


	2. Hawkins, Indiana (I)

"_Plenty of bitches in the sea_," Billy said, and his voice was weird and watery as he looked down, and he was straddling Steve, kneeling over him on the ground, but he was grinning, a wild maniacal grin, and he wasn't hitting Steve, his arms were outstretched, riddled with black veins. The spit leaking from the corners of his mouth was black, too - or was it blood? That black blood he'd coughed up on the mall floor, yes, that seemed right. The black wound in his side was pulsing out black ooze with the rhythm of his heartbeat, and behind him, there were an army of Demodogs, and they rattled and shrieked, seemingly happy to let Billy Hargrove call them all bitches. Steve couldn't move again, his legs trapped, his arms heavy, and somewhere in the background there was a rhythmic thumping, getting louder and louder -

Steve opened his eyes, gasping. He couldn't move because he was tangled up in his sheets. The thumping was someone knocking on his apartment door, loud, and getting louder and more impatient. He took a deep breath in and yelled out hoarsely, "Hold your goddamn horses!"

The knocking stopped, and Steve untangled himself. It was November, but he was sweating. The tiny one-bedroom apartment he shared with Billy was always stifling when they were home. Billy couldn't stand the cold any more, and Steve wasn't much for it himself. Billy's single bed across the room was empty - he probably had a checkup down at the lab or something, they always liked to make sure he wasn't any more monstrous than before after these little trips - but the heater was still cranked up high. Steve shoved a hand through his hair and grabbed the first thing that looked comfortable and clean out of his dresser.

Robin was on the other side of the door when he opened it. She looked beyond unimpressed at his disheveled state. "It's six p.m.," she said, looking his sweats and messy hair up and down. "Were you seriously still asleep?"

"You know when I went to bed," Steve said, frowning at her, "because I called you right before you left for class. Are you surprised?"

Robin rolled her eyes. "No," she said, "but I had time to go to class and drive over here from Indy, so you really should have woken up by now." 

Steve sighed and gestured her in. "I think I told Hop I'd be by around dinnertime, anyway," he said, as Robin shrugged off at least half the layers she was wearing and put them in the coat closet. "I don't know what the hell we have in the fridge, but if it's not halfway to an Upside Down experiment, help yourself." He shuffled back into the bedroom to get some real clothes and then into the bathroom to try and get his hair in order. Robin didn't need to be babysat in his place.

By the time he was presentable to the outside world, Robin was plopped on his couch with store-brand cola and chips watching the news, of all things, so apparently their cupboards hadn't been completely bare. They hadn't been back in two weeks, so either that was Hop or Billy. Could have been either one, really. They both shopped like ridiculous bachelors who thought about a vegetable once in a while. Steve could only cook ridiculously elaborate dinner party food, so he couldn't say anything about it, really. He sat down on the opposite end of the couch from Robin, nudging her knee with one socked foot.

"How's being a freshman all over again?" he asked. Robin had a full ride to Butler for some kind of music degree.

Robin rolled her eyes. "It's great, there's a lot fewer douchebags like you giving me shit," she said, knocking his foot away with her leg. "Are you gonna tell me about that bandage on your shoulder or are we gonna keep ignoring it?"

Steve's hand automatically came up to cover it. It wasn't even that big, he thought resentfully. A gauze square was medical-taped over the stitches so they didn't catch on anything, or get fluids on his clothes as he healed. "Why would we need to talk about it?" he asked. "Job hazard."

"Billy has the same job as you and he doesn't come back looking like the Upside Down used him as a chew toy," Robin said, poking at a large claw scar that she knew ran over his ribcage.

"Billy has weird-ass brain powers," Steve retorted, jerking away from her touch. "I've just got my bat, my knife, and my hands." This was why they couldn't be roommates, aside from the fact that Robin picked a university three hours' drive away. She couldn't just let shit go. It was great when it was shit like Russian codes and deciphering what the scientists were actually studying from lab notes. Not so much when it was Steve and his life choices she was poking at.

Robin sighed and dropped her hands. "Maybe you could let the guy with weird-ass brain powers be the frontline troops for once?" she asked. She clearly didn't expect the answer to be 'yes', which was good, because what the hell use was Steve if he did something like that, anyway? He just gave her a speaking look and she flopped backwards onto the couch.

"Fine," she sighed, and he could see her making an effort to switch gears. "Your car really is a chick magnet, man. It's insane." She grinned at him.

"Ugh," Steve said, grinning back. "You better have cleaned it out before you brought it back here." Most of the time, they were in Billy's Camaro, so Robin drove the BMW so it wasn't just sitting. It had worked fine all summer, but other than the week he'd helped her move in, this was the first time he'd given her the keys since she'd gone off to college.

"What kind of lady do you think I am?" Robin said, clutching a hand to her heart dramatically. "I take my dates back to my dorm room, thank you very much. Unlike you. Do you know how many stashes of expired condoms I've found just driving around?"

Steve laughed. "Would you rather I not had the condoms?" he asked. "Might have been a lot more stains in the backseat without them."

Robin shuddered. "I don't think the world is ready for another Harrington kid," she said firmly. 

"Yeah, me neither," Steve said. The kids were too much trouble as it was. "Hey, pass me that coke, huh?" 

* * *

He was over at Hopper's forty-five minutes later. The switch back from what his life had been to what it was now was jarring, at first. Then it just felt comfortable. This was his life now. Talking shit with Robin was just… well, it wasn't bullshit, but it wasn't quite real life either. Not for him. It was a window into a place he could visit but not live. 

Steve and Hopper both paged through the notes he and Billy had salvaged. Billy wasn't there. He never was. Their little group had an unspoken, uneasy truce with the government; the military certainly didn't fund Steve and Billy's grassroots monster hunting crusade, but this other work Brenner had been doing hadn't been done under them, so they didn't feel the need to protect it quite so fiercely either. As long as they kept learning from Billy, they left the whole operation in Hawkins alone. Steve hated it, but Billy made his way to the lab like it was his penance and his due every time they came back to Hawkins. It was part of why Steve didn't mind spending so much time away. They'd never discussed it, but Steve never involved Billy in these little strategy meetings where they tried to suss out Brenner's whereabouts from the notes. Billy was doing enough work already. 

"This is… really disorganized," Steve said, after an hour or so of carefully going through information he didn't really understand. _Test Subject Alpha shows an aversion to blue-toned light_, one note said, while two weeks later there were remarks on the length of each of Test Subject Alpha's teeth and the possible relation it had to terrestrial creatures. It looked like some of the assignments he'd turned in his first two years of high school. 

Hopper grunted. "Yeah," he said. "They've got notes on ten different things about the damn monsters, and different tests every week." He closed his notebook with a thump.

"It's got three masters students involved, too, and five doctoral candidates," Steve said. "Not a lot of experienced researchers."

Hopper sighed. "Yeah," he said. "I'll see if Nancy can go through it and figure out exactly when it got unfocused, since she's better at that big-picture stuff, but Brenner knows what he's trying to do. I don't think he's been involved in the project for at least the last two years," he said. 

Steve sighed. Finding notes and monsters still at the site had made him hopeful. "That gives us a window, though," he said. "The factory was abandoned in 1980. If he left two years ago, that's only four years when he could have been there. So it's useful that way."

"True," Hopper allowed. "But I think if he'd stayed there for more than a year, it wouldn't be this… sloppy. He had a vision and he made his people see it and work for it."

Steve shrugged. "Probably," he said. "But that means that whatever this project was for originally, it's not something that he really cares about. And that can help us figure out what he does."

Hopper nodded. "Well, let's see if we can find some solid indications of when that son of a bitch was there," he said. "Let Nancy study for her exams. She can take a look when she's home for Thanksgiving."

"Be nice if we had something to show for this by then," Steve said.

"Other than the new bite she's going to ream you out for?" Hopper asked. When Steve looked up at him guiltily, he sighed. "Yeah, I noticed, kid. You've got to take better care of yourself."

"I'm a man of action, Hop, what can I say," Steve said, smiling lightly. 

Hopper sighed and shook his head. "You've got plenty of brains, or we couldn't do this," he said, indicating the table with all its paperwork. "I just want you to use it in the moment, too."

"I'll try," Steve sighed.

"All I can ask for," Hopper said. Then, by mutual silent agreement, they turned back to the papers.

* * *

It was late by the time he got back to the apartment. After ten, probably. But he and Hopper had made some good headway. Steve had unearthed a reference to a similar project down in a little town in Georgia that one of the Ph.D. students hoped to be tapped for once she'd finished her dissertation. Might have been where Brenner went next. He and Hopper had to dig up some more information about it first - the network of anti-government conspiracy theorists that Murray Bauman had introduced them to, the ones who funded all of this, probably had some connections - but Steve and Billy had their next destination.

When Steve stepped inside, it seemed like they had something else, too - a late dinner. Steve sniffed the air appreciatively, hanging his coat on the hook and putting his boots on the rack before he went into the kitchen. Billy was a real bitch about shit like that in their own home.

"Smells good," Steve said, sitting well out of the way at their beat-up kitchen table. 

"Beef stew," Billy said, voice hoarse like it always was after a day at the lab. Steve hoped it was just from talking to the doctors all day. "Rosemary's gonna take over the window box if we don't use it."

"I'll take your word for it," Steve said. He didn't touch Billy's little window planters. He had a black thumb.

"Set the table," Billy said, bossy as always. "It's almost ready, there's bread in the oven that your kid brought over while you were asleep."

Steve shot up quick. He would normally argue, but Dustin bringing over bread meant Mrs. Henderson had made it, and he wasn't about to delay putting that in his mouth for one more second.

The kitchen was small, but he and Billy managed not to bang into each other. They'd had a lot of time in close quarters to work out how the other moved. Steve would have liked some space away from Billy when they were home, but he couldn't stay in his parents' house any more, and he needed a roommate to afford the rent. And, well. He didn't want to live by himself, either. The quiet of the night was too much, after everything. Besides, this way he got to eat Billy's cooking. It hadn't started out great, but the last couple of months it had gotten to where Steve always went back for seconds.

"Find anything good?" Billy asked, when the food was dished out and they'd both slowed down enough to talk.

"Yeah, actually," Steve said. "I think we're headed to Georgia in a few days."

"Georgia?" Billy repeated with supreme disgust. "More fucking hicks? I thought we'd at least get to pass through a real city."

Steve shrugged. "It looked close to Atlanta on the map," he offered. "Maybe we can make a side trip."

Billy made a noise. "Don't think Atlanta really counts," he said, and stuffed a chunk of bread in his mouth.

"Well, it'll be warmer, at least," Steve said. It wasn't snowing in Hawkins yet, but he only gave it a couple of weeks until the first snowstorm of the year. 

Billy's face lightened a bit. "Yeah," he said.

"Which is good, cause we'll be camping," Steve said, leaning back in his chair to watch that bomb drop.

"_Camping_?" Billy yelped. His face was just as satisfying as Steve would have liked.

"Get ready, city boy," Steve said. He smirked. "Gonna show you how to pitch a tent and everything."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is so much shorter than the last one, that's just how it panned out. Anyway! Some domesticity for the boys. Or at least their approximation of it. Next time: camping, because clearly I live to make Billy Hargrove miserable.


	3. Madison, Georgia (I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got a little unwieldy on me, so in the interests of not making y'all wait forever and getting my spooky fic updated before Halloween, I split it up.
> 
> Madison, Georgia, is, in fact, a tiny town, but it's also technically an Atlanta suburb. This is not difficult, as the Atlanta metro area sprawls over... I think almost 30 counties across Georgia. I live two, two and a half hours away from the city proper, but only about an hour and fifteen minutes away from where Metro Atlanta begins. Stranger Things is actually filmed, for the most part, in various Atlanta suburbs, so it felt appropriate to pick Madison next from my list of suggestions. The forest they're in is Oconee National Forest.

Brenner seemed to like the woods. There was a state park just outside of the small Georgia town Steve and Billy were headed to, and somewhere in it, tucked away amongst the trees and the deer, was a bunker and the remnants of research. Their cover, this time, was deer hunting, since it was the season for it, and they could take their guns. The tradeoff was that they couldn't take the Camaro. Billy had left it very reluctantly with Max, who had promised to treat it better than the last time she had the keys. Instead, they were in a blue Ford Ranger provided by a mysterious connection of Bauman's, who left the keys in a PO box in Indianapolis. It had been a nine hour trip down, and Billy had spent most of it bitching, going so far as to refuse to drive when he normally insisted.

"If we had to drive a truck, why not a Chevy?" Billy grumbled, staring out the window as they rolled down the highway in the slow lane. The Ranger sure didn't have the get up and go of the Camaro. "A Blazer like the Chief drives, maybe. That's a decent car."

"What's wrong with this one?" Steve said, mostly to wind him up. Probably the biggest thing wrong with it was that it wasn't Billy's.

Billy snorted. "Are you fucking kidding me?" he asked. "There's no goddamn power in this. How are we supposed to haul ass out of town if we need to? This isn't even the one with the goddamn Mustang engine in it." His voice dripped scorn.

"You and I both know that the Camaro doesn't do offroading too well," Steve said, thinking about the rough ride over to the tunnels in it. "And what's wrong with a Mustang? I almost got a Mustang for my first car."

Billy turned and looked at him, a little interested despite his funk. "Oh yeah?" he asked. "You actually almost drove something cool, pretty boy?"

Steve laughed, thinking back for the first time in a few years. "Yeah," he said. "I went to this car show up in Indy when I was fifteen and there was this '69 model, one of the ones they put the Boss in. The guy that had it was trying to sell it quick - his wife had been in an accident or something - and I had half the money. My dad said he'd go in with me on a car, but when I showed it to him, he said no." He frowned. He'd almost forgotten about that. Maybe hearing the rumble of the Camaro's engine so much had brought the memory back. He could still see that guy's hopeful face, how it had fallen when Steve's father had refused to consider his offer and dragged Steve away.

"Shit," Billy said. Steve could see him shaking his head from the corner of his eye. "Still couldn't beat my baby, but losing a prize like that had to sting."

"Yeah," Steve said. Then he shrugged against the seat back, downshifting as they pulled off the highway. "I was really upset for a couple of months. Wouldn't look at any other cars. Think that's why the Beemer was a birthday present."

"Fit the image better, huh?" Billy asked. Steve would have expected him to make a crack about spoiled rich kids. It was nice that he understood instead.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. The Beemer was a great car, and he liked it just fine most days. But sometimes he still thought about that Mustang. "Of course, then I had all that car money to spare, so I blew it all on kegs and weed and a tacky necklace for the girl I was with, so it didn't exactly work out for my dad, either." He grinned.

Billy laughed. "No win scenario, huh? So you've always been pigheaded."

"Yup," Steve agreed. He'd actually sent about six hundred dollars by cashiers' check to the guy about three days after they'd left Indianapolis, when he realized that he couldn't talk his dad around. That's where most of the money had gone, really. But he'd been happy to let his dad believe it had all gone to parties.

It was a relatively easy drive down from Indiana, compared to what they were used to - nine hours on almost the same highway all the way down. When they got close to Atlanta, Steve had Billy get out the map and route them on all the little backroads around the city. Steve didn't know if it came from learning to drive in the suburbs of a congested California city or if it was one of Billy's gifts, but he always picked the best routes to stay out of traffic, stay under the radar. One more beat-up pickup in Georgia wasn't that notable, but seeing as how they didn't know how Brenner kept evading them, it was better to take precautions.

Still, by the time they hit Madison, Steve was beat, and they still had to get perishables and a hunting license. Not under their real names, of course, but it was better to have their paperwork in order.

"Wanna get something to eat, maybe get the lay of the land before we camp?" Steve asked. They'd left early so they'd still have daylight to set up the campsite.

Billy made a disgusted face at the idea of camping again, but he nodded. "This is a real one-horse town, maybe even worse than Hawkins," he said. "Probably don't have many places to eat. Good chance our guys might have come through. Can't eat camp food all the time."

"Maybe __you __can't," Steve said. Tommy's dad had taken them camping a few times, back before they discovered girls and parties, and hunting too. Steve could have stayed out in the woods eating hot dogs and fresh-caught trout for weeks. Even the creepy shit in Hawkins' woods hadn't ruined that for him. Billy grunted, not agreeing or disagreeing.

They pulled up to a diner with a yellow sign. The bell jingled merrily as they walked in, and the one waitress, a woman in her late forties with graying brown hair and cigarette lines around her mouth, straightened up and smiled at them. It was coming up on three in the afternoon, and the place was practically empty but for her and the cook.

"I'll be right with y'all," she said. "Sit wherever you'd like."

Steve picked a booth by the wide windows, and Billy shuffled in across from him. It wasn't really chilly outside here, so the sun streaming in the glass had baked the seats warm, and he watched Billy's shoulders untense as he settled down and looked at the menu.

"What can I get y'all to drink?" the waitress said, smiling at them both. Her nametag read Louise. Steve smiled back reflexively.

"I'll have a coffee, please," he said. He could smell it over the frying oil, black and bitter and overbrewed, and it made his mouth water. He could barely drink his mom's imported stuff any more when she had him over, he'd gotten so used to the coffee in places like this.

"Alright," Louise said, and looked over to Billy. "And you, hon?"

Billy smiled at her, using what Steve knew was the most charming, borderline sleazy grin in his arsenal. "I think I'll have a coffee too, Miss Louise," he said, slouching so his hair caught the light just so. Steve stifled a snort.

"I'll get that right out for you, boys," she said, smiling at them again. "Lemme know when you're ready to order, I'll be just right there."

Billy smirked at Steve's disbelieving look before he lit up a cigarette, pulling the ashtray closer to him. "We got much longer to go?" he asked Steve.

Steve raised a brow at him, barely skimming over the menu. Ever since he'd seen those hash browns, he knew what he was getting. "You were the one looking at the map," he said. "But I don't think so. We gotta find a bait shop or something and get our paperwork before we get there, though."

Billy nodded. Then his attention caught on something else, and he was up and out of the booth before Steve could see what it was. He turned around.

"Here, let me get that for you," Billy said, leaning over the counter, where Louise was struggling with a pack of matches. Billy whipped out his lighter like he thought he was some gentleman in a 40s movie, and Steve barely resisted rolling his eyes. At least Billy's shirt wasn't half-open, the way it would have been two years ago when he was putting on the moves.

Louise, for her part, leaned down and took a deep drag before smiling at Billy. "Well, bless your heart, honey," she said. "Thank you for that."

"Oh, it's no problem," Billy said, swiping one of the coffee mugs she'd been about to bring them. "I'm happy to help out a lady."

Louise laughed. "I bet you are," she said. "You boys ready to order? I know boys your age always have a good appetite."

"I think so," Billy said. "We've been on the road a long time, I am pretty… hungry." He licked his lips.

"Well, go on and sit down then, I'll be right there with the other coffee," Louise said, smiling. But Billy was frowning just a little as he came back to the booth. Steve had never seen him flirt like this without some kind of response.

"Did I hear y'all saying you'd been traveling?" Louise asked, when she'd called both their orders out for the cook. Steve, face-deep in his blessedly strong coffee, took a minute to catch up.

"You sure did," Billy said, quicker on the uptake than Steve was.

"We heard the deer hunting was better down here," Steve said, putting the coffee down. "Jamey's never shot a buck before, so we figured we'd take a few days."

"Well, that's just plain nice," Louise said. "You gotta be good friends to hang out in a deer stand all day together."

Billy laughed, his showiest, nicest one. "Miss Louise, we spend half our lives crammed in a car together for work. A deer stand is pretty spacious quarters, compared."

Steve doubted Billy had ever even seen a deer stand, but he was good at playing it off, at least. "I don't know," he chimed in. "I can't push you out of the car without some work. You'd roll right off of a deer stand."

Billy and Louise both laughed at that one. "So what do you two do, then?" Louise asked them, stubbing out her cigarette in their ashtray. "Oh, sorry, honey," she added, when Billy tried to ash his at the same time. He'd been going for a light brush of fingertips, Steve knew, trying to get Louise to blush.

"No problem," Billy said, and leaned in, laying it on really thick. "We're traveling salesmen, we make photobooks," he said. "Gotta have two for the kids, one to distract 'em and one to take the pictures. I'm pretty good at being… distracting." He bit his lip.

"Oh, how nice," Louise said. "I can see how you'd wanna get away from people for a good little while for your vacation, though."

"Oh, I don't know," Billy said. "Some people are just fine. Like you, Miss Louise."

Louise laughed and swatted at his hand. "Now, stop," she said, smiling. "You are a sweet young man. Nice to have some of those come through here." She got up to get their food.

"Sweet young man?" Steve said to Billy in an undertone. He was barely restraining himself from cackling.

"I don't know," Billy hissed, looking a little dumbfounded.

"It's the south," Steve said. "Guess it's just manners here."

Billy slumped back in his seat as Louise came back, plates in hand, and although he wasn't quite sulking, he'd turned off that sexy, magnetic charm. Looked like it was Steve's turn.

"Thank you," he said, giving her the grin that had gotten him out of so much trouble with his teachers. "Actually, since you're not too busy, could you tell me if there's a good bait shop or something around here? I don't like to carry urine in the car, since we're in it so much, y'know?" He ignored the horrified look Billy couldn't help but flash him.

Louise laughed. "Wish my Melvin were as considerate as you!" she said. "I hate riding in his truck September to January. We've just got the one shop that carries that kind of thing, Harper's down the way. He's been there for twenty-three years, though, so he knows his stuff. Go two blocks up and take a left and then a right, it's got a big blue sign. Think he keeps the papers on hand if you boys haven't gotten them yet."

"That's perfect," Steve said. "We didn't want to stop in Atlanta, so we haven't yet, no."

"Oh, heavens, no," she agreed. "You'd never get out of there before dark. That place just keeps getting bigger and busier by the minute."

Steve nodded, though he had no basis for comparison and no idea that Atlanta was apparently such a metropolis of the south. Billy jumped in, though, apparently over his flirting going down like a lead balloon.

"Oh, it can't be that bad," he said. "My dad was stationed at Oceanside for a few years when I was little, so we had to go into San Diego sometimes. That was messy."

Louise laughed. "No, I don't think Atlanta is quite that bad, but it's getting that way," she said. "Give it a few more years."

"So you've been here a long time?" Steve asked, picking up a forkful of food while it was still hot. Mmm. Salty, greasy, and delicious.

"All my life, honey," she said.

Billy grinned at him across the table. "So she'd know," he said, with a note like he'd won a longrunning argument. That tone Steve knew well, and he played along, huffing and leaning back in his seat.

"Jamey, it's bull... crap," he said, glancing at Louise, "and we both know it. Don't bug her about it."

"It's empty in here, honey, y'all aren't bugging me at all," Louise said, open curiosity on her face. "What are you talking about?"

Steve groaned and applied himself to his hash browns as Billy sat up, the spark of triumph in his eyes mostly unfeigned.

"Curt's little brother is one of those conspiracy nuts, y'know?" Billy said, leaning in. "He just has to look up every place we're going, and he sends us postcards with all his weird theories or whatever. Most of it is just kid stuff, y'know, but he's got a ham radio to talk to other conspiracy people so sometimes he digs up something interesting. Anyway, he almost hit the roof when we told him where we were going on vacation. He says there was some experiment on the deer here." Billy rolled his eyes expressively. "I told him it was probably just an outbreak of sickness or something, it happens sometimes, but you know how kids are. Convinced they're right, all the time. He knew Curt wouldn't want to bother anybody about it, but I promised him I'd ask, just in case, so he'd know if the deer were safe to eat or not."

Louise laughed again, but it had a different note than last time, and her lips were pinched as she struggled to light a cigarette again. "Well, bless his heart. Oh, thank you," she said, as Billy leaned in to light her smoke again. "It's funny the things that get around. Our deer are perfectly safe to eat, honey. There was some funny business out in the preserve, men on trucks that came out a few years ago, but they said they were prepping for something with the Commies, nothing to do with the deer at all. There's just some areas off limits in the forest."

"See, I told you and Dustin it was nothing," Steve said.

"Yeah, but I promised the kid," Billy said easily. "Can't break a promise."

"I guess," Steve said. "I think we're about finished, Miss Louise, thank you for everything," he said. Billy was mopping up the last bits of ketchup with a stray fry, and his plate was empty too. Their lifestyle rewarded eating fast.

"It's no problem," she said, smiling at them both, a little relieved maybe. "You come back before you leave town, hear? I doubt your mamas would want you on the road with nothing but camp food and coffee in your bellies."

"We'll do that," Steve said, laying some cash on the table before getting up and stretching. "You have a good evening."

"You too, honey," she said.

Billy punched Steve in the shoulder as soon as they were out of sight in the parking lot. That was fine, because Steve was bent down with his hands on his knees, trying not to cry from laughter. "First time the Hargrove smolder has failed, huh?" he asked, gasping for breath.

"It's not my fault manners are weird down in Georgia," Billy said, scowling. "Besides, I got what we needed, didn't I?"

"Sure," Steve said, "but a conspiracy nut younger brother is kind of memorable, don't you think?"

Billy smirked. "Not as memorable as it would have been if she picked up what I was putting down," he said, sleaze dripping from his tone.

Steve rolled his eyes. "Like you'd ever go through with it," he said. "You're all bluster, __Jamey__. I don't think I've ever seen you flirt for real."

Something in Billy's expression went a little cold at that, and Steve wondered what hidden tripwire he'd stumbled over. "And you're not gonna, __Curt__. I don't flirt with guys who buy fucking urine from a bait shop. What's up with that?"

"We're not actually gonna buy urine since we're not actually hunting deer," Steve said, getting in the truck and starting it up. "Not unless we have to sneak up on whatever is in the bunker. You have to cover your scent and the piss tells the deer it's safe."

Billy's face was a mask of horror as they followed Louise's directions. "If we have to be covered in deer piss, that's all you. It's taken me a year to grow my hair back this much. You can make that sacrifice."

* * *

They'd been served at the bait shop by Harper himself, who, while just as chatty as Louise, had managed to impart much less information - at least the kind of information Steve and Billy were interested in. He hadn't raised an eyebrow at the James Mustaine and Curt Gore IDs Steve and Billy had provided him with the license applications (a fact that Billy peacocked about as soon as they were out of earshot), and he talked their ears off about good places to camp and hunt. If he wasn't here for what passed for work, Steve would be interested. As it was, he only listened enough to determine the campsite that was probably the least populated this time of year. The locals didn't like to get too close to "government territory".

"It's definitely not government territory," he said as he guided the truck down a long dirt road. "Or they would have kept us out of here." They'd been steered away from a project once before, out in New Mexico. That had been an interesting negotiation.

"Or not let me leave," Billy muttered. Steve wasn't sure he was supposed to hear that, so he hummed noncommittally.

"So what the hell are they doing out in the woods?"

"Could be fucking anything," Billy said. "Up and at 'em, pretty boy. We gotta get to that campsite so we've got a home base for investigating."

"Not so fast," Steve said, parking the truck. "We gotta go on a little hike first."

* * *

The campsite was just as isolated as Steve hoped, but also as isolated as he'd feared. If they needed to get out of here, fast, they didn't have their normal quick getaway. It was half a mile's hike from the parking area to their tent, and then a careful mile's drive down a rutted dirt road, rough and filled with holes, before they reached something paved. If they tried to fly down it, the Ranger might tip or stall. All in all, Steve didn't think it was worth either the faces Billy made or the fact that they got to keep their guns with them.

For all his bitching, when Steve directed him, he did whatever was needed to get the campsite up. Even the part where he had to dig a latrine. Steve knew Billy had recovered well from the Mind Flayer - he worked with the man almost every goddamn day now - but it was one thing to know it when they were running from an angry mob or some pissed-off creature, and another to see it in front of him, skin flushed and glowing with sweat over lean muscle as he labored in the temperate air of Georgia in mid-November. His scars didn't seem to pain him today, like they sometimes did, and he was whistling the guitar riff to Seek and Destroy under his breath. He looked… happy, even after everything. Steve didn't want to look away.

"You almost finished with that tent?" Billy asked. Steve hurriedly looked down at the tent pegs.

"Yeah," he said. "You done with that?"

"Yeah," Billy echoed. "What next?"

"Next?" Steve asked, grinning. "I'm gonna teach you how to be a woodsman."

* * *

Outdoors in California was different than outdoors in the woods. At least, the places where Billy had lived, Steve assumed. Most of the time when Steve had been out in the woods or empty fields in the past few years, he'd been at a party, when being quiet had been the last thing on his mind. But those lessons from Mister Hoffman had never really left him, and Steve dug up what he'd been told from the distant reaches of sixth grade memories and tried to instruct Billy.

"You don't want to be too quiet," he said, "because in woods like these, where there's a lot of underbrush, there's snakes."

"I'm not afraid of snakes, come on," Billy said with a snort. "I'm not some girl."

"No, but I don't know what all the poisonous ones out here look like, and even if I did, I don't know enough rhymes to teach you to recognize them," Steve said. "So it's better to be loud enough so they know you're coming. They're more scared of you than you are of them, so they'll skedaddle."

"God, you talk like such a hick sometimes," Billy said, stomping along in his boots obligingly.

Steve winced. "Not quite that loud," he said. "Not like we want whatever else is out there to know we're coming."

Billy grunted. "Well, which one is it?" he said. "Are we being loud or quiet? Make up your fucking mind."

"We're aiming for a happy medium," Steve said firmly. "Now, come on. Don't put your whole foot down at once like that. Toe first, then let the heel come down. Let the noise come from there. Enough to scare off a snake, but not a deer."

"We're not hunting fucking deer!" Billy said, stopping dead and throwing his hands up in exasperation.

Steve rolled his eyes. "No, but prey have better senses of hearing than predators, so if the deer can't hear you, neither can whatever we _are _looking for!"

Billy looked slightly appeased. "Fine," he said, and put his foot down like Steve said.

Steve led them both in an ever-widening spiral around the campsite, getting his own rusty outdoorsman skills back in practice and giving Billy some time to learn what he'd need to know for this investigation to go smoothly. It had gotten dark a while ago, but Steve didn't stop or suggest they move back to the tent. Most of what they'd need to do, they'd need to do in the dark, and they had hunting rifles, anyway. The only concession he made was slowing down. He didn't want either one of them to delay their shit by breaking an ankle. That was probably the only reason why they found the structure.

The beam of Steve's flashlight caught a flash of dull metal through the underbrush, and he stopped, holding a hand up to Billy, who froze and then put his foot down, twice as carefully as he had been walking before.

"There's something here," Steve said, low, just over a whisper.

"What kind of something?" Billy asked. Steve indicated the shine with a jerk of his head.

"Well, we lucked out, I guess," Billy said. Steve caught the white flash of his grin in the dark. "You first, pretty boy."

Steve turned off the flashlight and unslung his rifle, running his hands over it to make sure it was loaded and ready. The moon was almost full tonight, and while the creeping vines and small bushes in this area were dense, the trees were only loosely scattered, leaving plenty of room for them to see by moonlight once their eyes had adjusted. He moved from tree to tree slowly, looking for more of that metallic glint.

It was well hidden, Steve would give them that. Much better than the one in Ohio. There was paint over the low building, something that was probably green or brown in the sunlight, and branches of bushes had been encouraged to grow over the probably three feet of metal sticking out of the ground. But whoever had done this wasn't immune to nature. In a few places, the paint had begun to flake.

Steve circled the place slowly, looking for… clues, he supposed. Suspicious shadows. A way in. Dimly, he could hear Billy following him, but he wasn't focused on that. He was circling closer to the thing - a bunker, he guessed - toe-heel, scuffling the leaves out of the way with a smooth whisper using the side of his feet, widening his eyes like that would help.

Something not him or Billy made a noise. Steve looked up and held his breath.

Not fifteen feet in front of him was a massive buck, the biggest he'd ever seen. Tommy's dad had bragged about the time he'd shot a twelve-point buck - this one had to have at least sixteen points to the antlers. Steve's head stood level with its shoulder. Its hooves were bigger than the palm of his hand. It didn't move and neither did he. He just took in slow, deep breaths as they watched each other.

Something was wrong, other than its unbelievable size. Steve lived in small-town Indiana, so he knew what the stale unpleasantness of deer piss and musk smelled like. He'd sat in the booth next to it in diners all his life. Any wild animal smelled musty, rank, at this distance, but the smell here was different. It wasn't a natural smell. It was foul, but not like unwashed animal or even the unpleasant but known stink of rot. This deer smelled… dark, for lack of a better word. Oppressive. Like the dank dark dripping of water underground, like mosses and rock that had never seen light. Like the heaviness in the air before a fight.

"Billy," Steve hissed, backing up as slowly and as quietly as he dared. He settled his rifle into place, aiming it at the deer's neck. With a buck that big, he didn't know if the thin place between the eyes was thin enough.

"What?" Billy hissed back. He wasn't close enough to smell the wrongness, or he'd know.

"Watch out," Steve said, sliding his feet backwards. The buck still hadn't moved. Steve wasn't even sure it was breathing. He might have mistaken it for a taxidermy joke, if not for that smell.

They both backed up about five feet, towards where the trees got thicker, when Steve heard a rattling sound. Instinctively, he jerked his gaze away from the buck. _Shit_. That was a diamondback. They'd forgotten to make enough noise.

"Billy," he said, too concerned about the snake to whisper, "stop walking. Right now."

"What?" Billy said, turning to him.

Steve pointed to the snake, and Billy's eyes snapped to the rattle. To his credit, he backed up with alacrity. They probably didn't have the same kind of rattlers where he was from, but he knew enough to recognize the warning.

With the immediate danger gone, Steve looked back up. They were lucky the creepy buck hadn't attacked them. But the space where it had been was empty. Steve spun around, looking to see if it had just moved. But it was nowhere. Somehow, an animal that big had just vanished without a sound.

* * *

They'd both lost the inclination to poke around after that. At least, during the night. The Upside Down, the shadow place, whatever it was that gave power to everything they encountered, was stronger at night, in the dark. Now that they knew there was something there - Steve told Billy in a low voice about the smell, the size, as he guided them back towards camp - they knew better. They'd come back in the late morning, maybe. They both could use the sleep.

Steve could have sworn that they'd only been walking around for a couple of hours past sunset, but the sky was graying as they left the clearing. He bit his lip and looked at his watch. It had stopped. There was no way to tell how much time had actually passed, being stared down by that buck. Time had gone strange for them before, once or twice. They never knew what strange powers the creatures they'd encounter would have. Every group took Brenner's findings in a different direction.

"Is your watch stopped too?" he asked Billy. Sometimes whatever remnants of the Mind Flayer were left in him was enough to resist the effects.

Billy checked. "No," he said. "Says one-thirty." He looked at Steve grimly, then up at the dawning sky. It was clearly not one-thirty, AM or PM.

Steve grimaced. "Five hours?" he guessed. That was probably as much time as they'd lost.

Billy shook his head. "We're further south here," he said. "Six, probably."

Steve bit his lip. Not good.

They were crossing a large creek, one he'd used to show Billy how a current could be deceptive even in shallow water, when they heard it - close. Gunshots. One, two, three in a row, breaking the quiet stillness of dawn and sending birds scattering upwards. It startled Billy, too, badly - he lost his balance on the makeshift branch ford Steve had set up and went windmilling into the water.

He came up, sputtering, before Steve had much time to worry, and he was shivering. "Shit," he said, face white and teeth chattering. "'S cold."

"It's _November_," Steve said, grabbing his hand and hauling him out. "Fucking idiots. Probably some stupid kid popping off early. It won't be properly time to get a deer for another two hours."

"You know a lot about p-poppin' off early?" Billy asked as he got to his feet. Steve kept an eye on his fingernails nervously. It would be several hours before it got anywhere close to warm, Georgia or not.

"I know how not to," he said, keeping hold of Billy's hands and chafing them between his own to get some warmth back in them. "Come on, campsite's not that far. You need some dry clothes."

'Not that far' was relative. It was still a mile's hike back to their tent, and the sun's rays hadn't penetrated the tree cover enough to even begin warming up the air. Steve watched worriedly as Billy got more and more sluggish and uncoordinated, and breathed a sigh of relief when they got to the tent.

"Did you bring any thermals?" he asked Billy. The other boy only shook his head, and Steve rolled his eyes, exasperated.

"Okay, fine then," he said, and dug through his own pack until he got ahold of his spare long johns and thermal undershirt. Thank god Billy had lost some of his bulk after recovering from possession, or this would never work.

"Get in the tent, get those wet clothes off, and put these on," Steve said, tossing them at Billy. "Then get in your sleeping bag. I'm going to get a fire going, get something hot for you to eat to help you warm up."

"Bossy, bossy," Billy said gruffly, but his heart wasn't in it and his eyes were half-glazed over. "Mother hen Harrington." But he got in the tent, and Steve heard the rustling sounds of him changing, and that was what mattered.

It did worry him, though, he thought, as he built up the fire, treated some water, and added a dry soup packet to it. Billy kept away from real names in the field as much as possible. He definitely wasn't feeling well if he called Steve by his last name, even way out here.

By the time Steve crawled into the tent with two mugs of steaming soup, it was clear Billy was still having some trouble warming up. When he reached out for his own mug, Steve had to help him; he was still shivering hard enough to drop it. Steve didn't think more soup was the solution.

"Okay, new plan," he said, finishing his own mug. "Get naked, Hargrove. I know it's your natural state anyway."

"What?" Billy asked, blinking. "You finally snap, go crazy with lust for me? I just knew it." He was slurring just a little around the words. Definitely not good.

"You caught me," Steve said, rolling his eyes. "Just can't resist you, hot stuff. No, clearly you can't warm yourself up, so it's time for step two: body heat."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve's woodsman tips for Billy are almost verbatim things my father and grandfather told me when I was learning about hiking and fishing. Indiana apparently doesn't have very many venomous snakes or rattlers, but I'm handwaving the fact that Steve might not have learned to need to make noise because Georgia has like... six, and two of them are potentially fatal. He took hunting trips elsewhere, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. (Also, yes, I know it's venomous and not poisonous; Steve neither knows nor cares.)
> 
> Steve and Billy's fake names are a shoutout to Supernatural's joke with Dean's fake IDs being classic rock musicians. Billy's is a combination of James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine, two of the original members of Metallica. Steve's is Curt Smith from Tears for Fears and Martin Gore from Depeche Mode.


	4. Madison, Georgia (II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The people want naked cuddling for warmth, I give them naked cuddling for warmth! Followed by some horror, though, so don't get too comfortable.

Steve gave Billy a little privacy to strip down. He took the opportunity to bank the fire and pour the rest of the soup into a thermos for when Billy's hands stopped shaking. Then he sighed, crawled into the tent on his hands and knees, and started shucking layers as they both avoided eye contact. 

Billy was still shivering when Steve crawled into his sleeping bag. That was a good thing, Steve reminded himself. Unlike the streams in the woods back in Hawkins this time of year, the water in this part of Georgia hadn't started accumulating ice at the edges. Billy didn't have the truly dangerous type of hypothermia yet. He was just cold. Ice-cold, Steve amended, hissing when Billy's half-frozen feet and hands found him. Billy let out a little sigh that sounded involuntary. 

"Jesus," Steve said, fighting not to shiver himself. "Your fucking hands, man."

"Sorry I didn't expect a bunch of hicks shooting off so early in the morning," Billy said, rolling his eyes and pressing his hands closer to Steve's sides. 

"Neither did I," Steve said. "You can't even see the deer yet. Somebody got an itchy trigger finger, I guess."

"And we're stuck in the woods with 'em," Billy said.

"Cheer up," Steve said, as obnoxiously cheerfully as he could manage. "They're big fuckin' woods." He scooted a little closer to Billy and drew his feet between his own calves, shuddering.

Billy hissed and flexed his toes. His leg hair rasped against Steve's as he moved, strange and tingly-weird. "Not really makin' me feel better over here," he said.

"I can make you feel worse, if you want," Steve said, reaching for the soup thermos. "We're probably closer to a weird monster than we are to the rednecks with guns."

Billy snorted. "Yeah, well, I can use my, y'know, on weird monsters. I'll take them over the rednecks with guns any day."

Steve shook his head slowly and shoved the thermos at Billy, forcibly wrapping his icy hands around it. "What have you got against rednecks with guns?" he said. "It's not like they're gonna shoot you as long as you stay off their land, leave them alone." He paused, then considered who he was talking to. "Wait. Did you mess around with one of the farmers' girls back home?"

"No," Billy said, taking the soup with a grumble. "Jesus, you're such a mom. I didn't fuck a farmer's daughter. I'm just kind of scared of them coming after me in a mob, is all. The farmers or their daughters."

"Why?" Steve said, baffled. Billy was still slurring, so maybe Steve should have felt bad for asking all this. He probably wasn't in his right mind. He didn't, though. He'd spent ten months in a car with Billy and this was the first he'd heard of it. He felt, oddly, cheated. They'd been through a lot together. Didn't Billy trust him? It stung to think he didn't, since Steve was pretty sure the only people he trusted more were Robin and Hopper.

Billy rolled his head forward so his forehead rested in the dip of Steve's collarbone, hiding his face. "Cause I'm a queer, what do you think?" he asked, muffled.

Steve's mind went momentarily blank. He'd expected… maybe something about Starcourt, he guessed, or that the Hawkins citizens might work out something about his psychic powers or whatever. Not this. He opened his mouth once, closed it, and then said, "Well, what are the odds?"

Billy lifted his head and looked at him. "What, of a mob?" he asked, confused.

Steve rolled his eyes. "No," he said. "Now that you've stopped taking your shirt off so much, a mob in Hawkins probably isn't in the cards. No, the odds that two of the three people I can stand to hang around for more than an hour are queer." He paused and took in a deep breath. "And," he said. "So am I."

Billy was quiet for a few moments. Then his shivering took on a different quality, and Steve realized he was silently laughing, gasping for breath against Steve's shoulder. "Good job," he said, when he caught his breath. "You made friends with probably the only two other gays in Hawkins."

Steve laughed too, involuntarily. "I'm bisexual, actually," he said. He didn't mention that Robin had explained it to him. Then he snickered as a thought occurred to him. "We just gotta get Hopper to come out, complete the set," he got out, gasping.

Billy dissolved into hooting laughter. "Oh, Jesus," he said, rocking back and forth. "No, no, he can't. The Chief is already basically a bear. He'll have guys crawling all over him."

"Maybe - maybe he'd have better luck, they wouldn't care if he took them on an actual date or not," Steve said, cackling like some TV witch. They'd both heard about the date-that-wasn't with Joyce Byers, and though she might have accepted before, she'd moved now, so the whole deal was dead in the water. Billy and Steve had heard a few maudlin phone calls, both separately and together, and they were sure Hop was still pining. 

"He'd just have to show up and grunt out about five words," Billy said, reaching up to wipe the tears from his eyes. "Jesus."

His feet were starting to warm up and his shivers were subsiding. Steve absently chafed his arms. "Drink your goddamn soup," he said. "We've been out all night." 

Billy pointedly took a long gulp from the bottle and then shoved it at Steve. "Can't be an easy job, keeping me warm," he said. "You too." 

Steve obligingly took a deep sip. It was too salty and tasted cheap, but that was true of all the camp food he'd ever eaten that wasn't fresh-caught fish or quail. It tasted good in the same way as Hamburger Helper did. "Happy?" he said, passing the thermos back. Their fingers brushed, strangely electric. 

"Yeah," Billy said, drinking again. His voice was low and hoarse from laughter. Steve was suddenly aware of all the places they were pressed together. With what they'd both confessed, it felt charged, filled with potential. Steve breathed deep and bit his lip. 

Then Billy turned over, pressing his comparatively icy back up against Steve. "Shit!" Steve yelped, moment totally broken. 

Billy cackled. "Go the fuck to sleep," he said. "We've been out all night. We need some rest before we tackle that shit out there again." 

That was undoubtedly true, so Steve pulled Billy closer and closed his eyes. 

He had a few fuzzy flashes of one or the other of them startling awake a few times, when the noise of gunshots came from further in the forest, and being blearily soothed back to sleep. He thought he'd stroked Billy's hair, but it might have been a dream. When he woke up for real, it was because Billy was wriggling out of the tight confines of the spare sleeping bag, and it was pleasantly warm in the tent, almost hot, with the sun shining.

"What?" Steve asked, not at his best when waking when he didn't have to be up and hitting something.

"Too hot," Billy muttered, shuffling into his jeans. "Think you warmed me up too good." He was frowning.

Parts of Steve - he guessed the ones that Billy had been touching - did feel a little tacky with sweat, now that he was starting to wake up enough to feel it. He grimaced. Unless he wanted to court the same hypothermia that Billy almost got, it was swiping off by a stream with a cloth and soap for him. Hard to get really clean out in the woods, so Steve guessed he'd just live with the sweat residue for now.

"Yeah, okay," he said, voice rough, and cleared his throat. "We should get up anyway. See if we have some daylight left."

Billy nodded. "Better hurry up, pretty boy," he said. "You're on the hook for breakfast and coffee. I can't camp cook for shit."

Steve expected things to be weird between them as he built up the fire and they ate, but they were almost… peaceful instead. Most of the time there was some kind of tension between them, something Steve had always attributed to the pressure they were under to find Brenner or to their fraught history. It was weird to think it had been because there was still a secret between them. He didn't think things would ever be exactly easy between them, but there wasn't something tight thrumming under the surface any more. Or at least, not the same something.

"Did you notice anything at all when we lost all that time last night?" he asked as they finished up. He hadn't, but even though he was getting more and more sensitized to the Upside Down, he didn't always notice.

Billy frowned, wiping his mouth. "It was… darker," he said. "Should have been lighter in the clearing, but the moonlight… it faded, I guess."

Steve nodded. He'd been too preoccupied with the unnaturally huge buck to take it in, really, but he'd take Billy's word for it. "So we have a sign," he said. "The darkness and that… smell." A prickle ran down his spine at the thought of it.

"I didn't smell anything," Billy said. "What was it like?"

"Wrong," Steve said firmly. "You'd know it when you smelled it. It was like - like -" He struggled for words for a moment, then gave up. "It smelled big and wrong. It didn't belong here."

"Okay, so two things to go on," Billy said.

Steve looked up at the sky. "It's about noon," he said. "We weren't actually that far from camp when we found the place yesterday, or you would have been worse off. Do we go now and hope we can spot something if it happens, or wait until tomorrow when we have more daylight?"

"Now," Billy said definitively. "Even if we did wait until tomorrow, we've still got to get inside that bunker, and it'll be dark inside. If there's something in there smart enough to distort time, I don't want to give it any more lead than it already has coming up with a way to deal with us."

"All right," Steve said, and got up to bank the fire and grab his gun. "Let's get moving, then."

* * *

They ended up having to search around the bunker in a spiral looking for entrances. There was nothing on the outside that suggested an access point, even when they went so far as to run their hands over the metal, clearing away the brush and moss. Billy pointed out that there had to be some kind of emergency exit out into the woods, for fire or contamination from the experiments if nothing else, so they crept low to the ground, working outwards. Billy found the metal grating, and they both stared at it and the sturdy bolts that kept it anchored to the metal tunnel below.

"Why is it fucking underground all the time?" Steve muttered.

Billy didn't answer him, flexing his fingers against his palms and then releasing before squeezing again. Steve went to lean down, see if the weather had weakened any point of the grate, but Billy shook his head sharply when he moved. 

"Billy, what -" Steve asked, but a tiny noise got his attention. Each bolt was slowly turning in its housing, lifting up on its own. Steve looked back up and scrambled to put his glove to the thin stream of blood trickling from Billy's nose.

That was part of why they didn't use Billy's powers, or whatever, outside of a fight. There weren't many commonalities between the Upside Down creatures they fought, but the way they smelled blood was one of them. Billy didn't always get a nosebleed like El - probably because his powers came directly from possession and not indirect experiments - but often enough that they didn't take the risk. 

"What were you thinking?" Steve hissed, holding Billy's face steady with one hand while he ran the wool of one gloved finger roughly under Billy's nose a few times, until he was sure the redness was from friction and not blood. Meanwhile, the grate had set itself softly on the ground. 

"That this was the quietest, fastest way in, and we need as much light as we can get," Billy hissed back. He grabbed Steve's bloody hand by the wrist, pushing it away from his face. "Now are we gonna get down there today or not?"

Steve pulled his hand free and knelt to scrub the blood off on the grass and leaves by Billy's boot. Billy heaved him back up once the glove was clean. "You gonna let me take point this time? The control for little stuff wipes you out," Steve said. That wasn't even mentioning last night's hypothermia incident. 

Billy sighed. "Fine. You first," he said grudgingly, making an expansive gesture at the hole. 

"Just what I always wanted, another fucking dank underground base," Steve muttered. But he made his way down the steps cut into the side of the metal wall. 

Billy got stuck with flashlight duty, since he was behind and the tunnels were narrow. Steve kept both hands on his rifle, finger firmly off the trigger but held ready, as they crept forward. After a few steps, emergency lighting for the lab flickered on, and they both stopped still, looking warily around for any signs of incursion. After two heart-pounding minutes, the lights stayed steady, so Steve whispered, "The other place didn't have power."

"Means this one was shut down later," Billy whispered back. It seemed as safe as they were going to get, so they moved on.

Abruptly, the tunnel opened up into a largeish room, a little bigger than the living room in Steve's parents' house, ringed on all sides by glass windows looking into cells. There was only one door, though, across from them, and the windows had all been coated in a thick layer of black paint that their flashlight beams didn't penetrate. Between the windows were filing cabinets - or Steve assumed they belonged between them when they were upright, but they were all tipped over, drawers open, with only a few scraps of torn and burned paper within. When he cautiously moved forward to examine the long equipment bench in the middle of the room and the one desk, it was the same thing. The bench yielded nothing but a fine scattering of broken glass and ash, and the desk didn't have a single readable scrap of paper.

"They did a better job of taking care of their data and a worse job at covering up whatever they were doing," Billy muttered, as they slowly circled the room. The place was a mess. They wouldn't get anything useful from here.

"Well, maybe they left something else," Steve said, nodding at the door.

"Let's hope," Billy said quietly. A dead end here meant going back to Hawkins and waiting for more whispers, searching the papers for more signs.

Whoever had trashed this room hadn't bothered to lock the door. As it turned out, it led to a hallway with a series of doors on one side only - clearly each door went along with one blacked- out window in the big room. Steve turned the corner and tried the first one.

It was unlocked, opening with a hiss, like Steve had broken some kind of seal. The air was close and stale. Inside it was empty except for a big, dark stain in the center of the floor, streaky and bubbly at the edges. Steve huffed in a breath, and then paused. It wasn't the same, but there was almost a trace of whatever unnatural dark smell he'd noticed when the buck appeared.

"Anything weird?" he asked Billy, looking for traces of darkness.

Billy shook his head. "Not so far," he said.

The next room was the same. It was the third room that wasn't.

There was a body lying on the floor, in the center of one of those dark stains. It was an old body - dry, leathery skin and hair over bones, outside mostly intact but for a few holes near the eyes and mouth. The flesh sat limply over the skeleton, like the soft parts in between had been eaten away, and the face had drawn back from the teeth a little, so it looked like the body was grimacing in pain. Whoever it was had been a scientist, Steve guessed, from his stained, half-open lab coat. Somehow, his clothes and torso were untouched, except for the belly. His abdomen spilled open, still half-swollen and distended, ripped outwards as if from inside. The edges of his torn flesh were black, and the cavity where his organs should be gleamed, wet, even after all this time. 

"What the fuck," Steve whispered.

Billy, clearly, had been looking around while Steve was staring at this mystery. "There's a syringe," he whispered, and slid around Steve to pick it up with an inside-out ziploc bag. "Maybe this has something to do with what happened." He nodded at the strange corpse.

"Maybe," Steve whispered. "Anything else?"

Billy cut loose a bit of the black stuff from the corpse and put it in a separate bag before they backed out of the room and headed for the next little cell. Steve shuddered as they closed the body back in. This door, he made sure to seal back up.

There were three more rooms that were more like the first two, although one had a dried black stain thick enough that Steve could scrape some of it carefully into another bag. The last cell was the only one on its hallway, clearly oversized, and Billy hissed as Steve put his hand on the door. 

"_Not_ that one," he said, voice thick. "I've got a real bad feeling about that one."

Steve took his hand back, but slowly. "We didn't get much from this one," he said quietly. "What if whatever's in there will let us know more?" 

"What if it'll kill us both and then no one will get any more information at all?" Billy countered.

Steve clicked his tongue. Billy's bad feelings, when he got them, were to be trusted, really. But he didn't like leaving part of this base unexamined, not when they had way more new mysteries than they had answers.

"What if we go around to the front again, try to scrape some of the paint off?" he suggested. "You probably have your knife on you, don't you? Is that safer?"

"I dunno about safer," Billy said, "but I don't get the same bad feeling from it." He shrugged. "You know as well as I do that doesn't mean too much, though." 

Billy's powers were… unreliable, although he said they'd gotten better by leaps and bounds since he started working with Steve. '_Probably because I have to use them or your dumb ass would be dead, Harrington_,' he'd told Steve once.

"I'll take those odds," Steve said. "Let's go get a look at what's in there." 

They made their way back down the hall. When they passed the door with the body, they both kept well clear of it, hugging close to the empty side of the hallway. The big observation room was just the same, thick layers of black paint and scraps of burned paper, but Steve went directly to the biggest window, the one that corresponded to the big cell. He held out his hand for Billy's pocket knife, not even bothering to ask with words. Billy slapped it in his hand, and then Steve heard the noises of him readying his own rifle, just in case things went to shit.

The paint in the bottom right corner of the window wasn't as thickly layered as the rest, and Steve got to work scraping it away, wincing at every squealing stroke of metal on glass. He kept his eyes firmly on the task and didn't give in to the temptation to press an eye into the room until he'd cleared a reasonable window. Then he got out his flashlight and knelt down.

There was… another deer in the room. Or, Steve guessed he had to call it that, for lack of a better word. It wasn't an Upside Down monster - no teeth, no petal mouths, no slime - but there was something unnatural about it, more unnatural, unnerving, than the buck had been. This deer was normal sized, a doe, but with a distended abdomen, bulging out in large lumps along her belly. There were little… lumps of shadow around her, a few as small as as a cantaloupe, but most much larger, some almost as big as a yearling calf. They were moving, undulating towards her, but she was busy. One of the masses in her belly was moving up.

Steve could track its path - up through the gullet where it rested, up past the ribs, pushing at them until he thought they'd break or break through the skin, up past the breastbone and finally into the throat. It rested there for a moment, as the doe's sides heaved. Then the lump started moving up, rippling, deforming the soft flesh of the doe's throat around itself. She splayed her legs and bent her head low, panting, as it moved up and into the back of her mouth.

It was too big to fit past her jaw, open wide and drooling, and then it - wasn't. The thing in the doe forced her jaw open, wider than it should have been able to move, but it didn't tear or pop, it just opened wider and wider like a snake's, until one of those cantaloupe-sized lumps of shadow heaved out of the doe's mouth and came to rest gently on the stained concrete floor. The doe stood, panting, a moment more, before it… nuzzled it, the way a mother cow might a newborn calf.

Steve fell back from the window, panting. He knew what those were. He didn't know how, but he did. Every single one of those lumps of shadow were babies, and the babies would become like the buck above. That's why the doe wasn't like him. She was breeding them, still, even in all this time the lab had been empty. She was their mother.

"They were taking animals and making hybrid creatures," he told Billy. "There's got to be ten of them in there. We've got to torch it. There's lighter fluid back at camp, come on." He was scrambling up as he spoke.

Billy grabbed him by the shoulders. "Steve," he said. "Hold on. Listen to yourself. If there are ten of them, no way can we take them on our own. They're sealed up right now. It won't hurt to leave them."

Steve stiffened up under his hold. "The longer we leave it, the more they'll make," he said. "They're not just gonna die in there like a regular animal! You saw how old that body was, and they're still alive."

"But they haven't gotten out, have they?" Billy asked. His voice was low and hypnotic, and Steve found himself caught by his eyes, wide and staring directly into his. "They're still in there, and that monster deer is still out there in the woods. If they could have gotten out, they would have, don't you think?"

Steve was breathing hard, still, but he was starting to calm under the pressure of Billy's hands and the weight of his eyes. "We don't know that," he said hoarsely. "We know they can mess with time but we don't know anything else."

"They didn't smell the blood," Billy said. "They're not going crazy trying to get to us. That big deer didn't kill us last night, even though it could have, easy. We can leave it, try to find out what's happening. Get some more information, maybe get some backup if they do need to go. Let's be smart about this, Steve."

Steve heaved out a sigh. "Okay," he said. "Okay. But we have to swing down here next month, see how things are going. Make sure no hunters have gone inexplicably missing."

"We'll make it happen," Billy promised, letting go of his shoulders. "Now let's get out of here. We have a lot of things to bring back to home base."

Steve's head felt foggy and buzzy as they climbed back out of the hole. Wasted adrenaline, he guessed. It didn't quite sit right with him, leaving Upside Down creatures so close to unsuspecting people, but there was a deep certainty in him that Billy had been right that let him walk away - without intending to charge back in with their lighter fluid.

He was behind Billy when he came out of the hole, so he saw how Billy's boots had just… stopped, stock-still. Not a wide, strong stance like when he was getting ready for a fight, but like he'd forgotten to pick his foot back up again for the next step. Steve froze halfway out of the tunnel. "Billy?" he whispered, but there was no response.

He risked a look around, and that was when he smelled it. He knew there had been traces of that thick, dark, unnatural smell down there, because he smelled the real thing, strong and heavy, now, and he knew that if he moved his eyes just a fraction, he'd see the buck again. He shouldn't. He should reach out, grab Billy, snap him out of it, get out of here. But Steve couldn't help it. His eyes were drawn to the buck.

It had the same huge rack, the same disturbing size as before. The presence was somehow even more oppressive, and Steve clenched at the ground, trying not to fall backwards. But that wasn't really a concern, because he couldn't move. It was more than it had been last night, and Steve knew, suddenly, that last night had been a warning, and that they were on the buck's territory when it wanted them to stay away. He tried to breathe, even to blink, but he couldn't. Not until the sound of a gunshot broke open the graying predawn stillness, and Steve and Billy both jerked. It was morning again. The buck was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a joke in another fic about how I don't actually do fic research, I just ask my friends weirdly specific questions about things I know are in their knowledge wheelhouse, and while that's not true to the letter in this fic (I do a lot of googling for each town!), it's certainly true in spirit. Special thanks to the friends who answered questions like "do slow-moving streams in the rural Midwest accumulate ice at the edges in winter", "which of these three methods of monster birth are most horrifying", and "what happens to a body that is left in a very sealed room from about an hour after death until at least eight months later", y'all are my writing support MVPs and I couldn't do it without you.


	5. Hawkins, Indiana (II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: references to past mental coercion.
> 
> I pound a lot on the Hearts of Space drum in this one, mostly because I've been listening to a lot of tapes of it while writing! If you, too, would like to experience it, three of the programs I listened to a lot for the last couple of chapters were [Lullabye in Blue](https://www.hos.com/#program/0101), [Crystal Light](https://www.hos.com/#program/0091), and [Scorpio](https://www.hos.com/#program/0113), which were all originally broadcast in '85 or '86, so Billy would have had tapes of them as well. You can't listen to them directly, but the site has playlists you can put together for yourself.

"They said _what_ now?" Hopper asked, pulling hard on his cigarette.

"Well, they said a lot of things," Steve said, lighting up his own and taking a long drag. "It's… some kind of urban legend now, I guess. The reason that campground was so empty is because no one goes there now, it's the black buck's territory. They were pretty chatty once they realized where we came from."

Hopper frowned. "Chatty how? Would they remember you?" he asked.

"Probably not," Steve said. "Not past the next couple of weeks, anyway. I told them we stayed out there because we thought we could bag the black buck." He rolled his eyes and tapped his smoke into the ashtray between them. "It's not even black. It's regular deer-colored. It just… makes you feel like it should be."

"So probably none of them have actually gotten close enough to know that, if that's what they call it," Hopper said.

"I don't think so," Steve said. "Once they pegged us as idiot out-of-towners, they were happy to tell us all about how stupid we were for trying to shoot this thing. They had all kinds of stories, and about half of them matched up with what Billy and me saw, so I'm willing to take most of the rest on faith. But there was nothing about the bunker, or about losing time - they just say it'll get you lost, that it smells strange, and that it disappears the moment you take your eyes off it." He frowned and pulled on his cigarette thoughtfully. "They treat it like… some kind of guardian, I think," he said.

Hopper chewed on the end of his cigarette. "Guardian?" he asked incredulously. "An Upside Down creature?"

Steve shrugged. "They don't know about the Upside Down, Hop," he said. "They just know that if they leave that part of the forest alone, they don't have any problems. That's what that early morning gunshot is for. Scares off some of the hunting deer, but it's supposed to remind the buck that night is over, that he's done guarding, so if anyone got lost in the woods, he can let them go back to the hunt camp, find their friends again." He ashed his cigarette again. "That's probably what got us away from it, the second day. We were in his territory then. He didn't like it. I don't think he was going to let us go before we all heard that."

"Well," Hopper said, frowning again, "if you say it seems safe enough for now, I'll believe you. The two of you have a good sense for it. Just surprises me you didn't try to burn the bunker down anyway. You can get a little over the top if you think people need protecting." He stubbed his smoke out.

"If people had gone missing, the hunters would have had a pretty different attitude about it," Steve said. He didn't mention the hypnotic pressure of Billy's eyes underground. "They wouldn't have teased us, we'd be suspicious for coming out of there in one piece. I still want to keep an eye on it, especially once we figure out more of what was going on down there, but for now, I think it's okay to leave it be."

Hopper grunted. "I'll get those samples you got us back to Bauman's network. They should have access to a lab that can get us some answers. In the meantime, take a couple of days. Nancy's back from college, and Jonathan is visiting with her. They're gonna take a look at what we've got, see if they can find us a next step. You know the two of them are better than any of the rest of us at that."

Steve nodded, stubbing out his cigarette. "Are we meeting up with them before or after Thanksgiving?"

"Before," Hopper said. "Probably tomorrow, if you don't have any other plans. Which reminds me. Joyce invited us all out to her new place. El and I are driving down before lunch. Ask Hargrove if he wants to come."

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it. He hadn't even thought of Thanksgiving plans this year. Maybe another stilted dinner with his parents where he'd have to lie about everything in his life, like eating with the Hollands all over again. "Uh, thanks," he managed. "I will."

"Just let me know soon," Hop said. "I've gotta tell Joyce so she can tell you what dish you've got to bring." 

Steve nodded. "I'll talk to Billy," he said. But he wasn't thinking about the dinner. He was thinking, again, about Billy's eyes.

* * *

Billy was lying in front of their stereo when Steve walked in, doing stretches on the living room floor with his eyes shut, listening to one of his space music tapes. It was one Steve had heard before a couple of times, in the middle of the night. He guessed Billy found it soothing, which meant that Billy knew what was coming. Steve didn't know if it was his brain shit or just regular old human intuition, but Billy clearly knew they were having something out tonight. Well, good. Meant Steve didn't have to build up to it. 

"Don't fuck with my head like that ever again," Steve said, hitting the power button on the stereo with extreme prejudice. 

Billy opened his eyes but didn't bother to sit up. "Like what?" he asked. 

Steve snorted. "Don't play dumb," he said. "You think I don't know what you feel like in my head by now, Hargrove? You think I don't know what kinds of things are and aren't like me? Once you stopped actively whammying me, I started to fight it. Why do you think I insisted so hard on talking to those hunters?"

Billy sat up so he could meet Steve's eyes. Steve wanted to flinch away, knowing what had happened the last time he had looked directly into that cool blue gaze, but he didn't. He knew now he could fight it off. 

"You were gonna get us killed," Billy said, looking steadily at Steve. Not sorry at all for using his gifts to convince Steve he was right. "There wasn't an immediate risk. Hell, those hunters know about that monster deer. They've worked out how to deal with it."

"But we didn't know that then!" Steve burst out. "And you didn't even try to talk me around! You just fucking mind tricked me!" 

"You wouldn't have fucking listened!" Billy yelled, standing up now. "You know me? Well, I know you too, Harrington! You and your fucking savior complex. Newsflash, asshole. We have to survive, because no one else can go down in these places and come out. No one else can get the information. We are the only ones that can stop more possessions from happening, more little girls from being fucking lab experiments, more towns from being turned into battlegrounds! If you think I'm going to apologize for keeping that from happening, for keeping you _alive_? You're dead fucking wrong."

Steve clenched his hands into fists until his nails bit into his palms. "Yeah?" he said softly. "Well, good luck doing that shit without a partner. Your fucking powers don't make you better or smarter than me. You treat me like an equal, or we're fucking done. I was the one that saved your ass from dying of hypothermia, remember? So no more fucking hypnosis shit. No more unilateral decisions. Don't treat me like some child to be protected. I do just as much as you do. And until you can admit that, I don't want to see your face."

He still had his boots on and his keys in his hand, so slamming out of the apartment was just a matter of grabbing his coat off the hook and evading Billy's grasping hand on his way out the door. He was breathing hard as he stomped down the hallway, heart thundering in his ears. How dare Billy. How dare he. Steve had been sitting on this and stewing since they left Atlanta in their rear view. And Billy didn't even have the guts to say he was wrong. 

Steve sat heavily on the steps outside, once he'd made it out there. He'd been so caught up in his righteous fury that he'd forgotten Robin wouldn't have driven the BMW back for Thanksgiving break until tomorrow. He'd have to walk to the corner store to get change and then to a payphone, call El since Hopper probably hadn't made it back from dropping him off yet, wait for the man to get back home, and then see if he would turn right back around to pick Steve up. The whole process suddenly seemed exhausting, and he slumped over, sighing, most of the anger drained out of him by the brisk November air. 

"Harrington. Steve." That was Billy's voice and Billy's familiar tread behind him. Steve stiffened up. 

"I'm not taking it back," he said, staring straight ahead. 

Behind him, Billy sighed. "Not asking you to," he said. "I'm asking you to go back inside. If you don't want to see my face, fine. Go back in the bedroom, I'll call Max and ask her to bring my car over and I'll clear out for the night. Don't sit out in the cold."

Steve turned around. Billy was in half-laced up boots and a sloppily zipped coat over the long-sleeved shirt he'd been wearing inside, like he'd just thrown on what he could to try and catch up with Steve. Normally, Billy bundled up like crazy before he stepped outside this time of year, so the fact that Billy was willing to brave it for him melted Steve a little more. 

"No," he sighed, scrubbing his face with a hand. "You don't have to do that. I'll come in." 

"Yeah?" Billy asked. 

"Yeah," Steve said. "You're sleeping on the goddamn couch, though." He wasn't sure he could sleep with Billy in the same room right now, not with his trust broken like this. 

Billy made a face. "Yeah, okay," he said. "I'm gonna call Max anyway. Having a sudden urge to make meatloaf and mac and cheese tonight." 

That was Steve's favorite. His mom had never made it, but Mrs. Henderson did all the time, and it was comforting, homey. Steve smiled, still angry but willing to be pacified. "With chocolate chip cookies?" he asked, teasing. 

"I'm sorry, did you want the apartment burned down?" Billy asked, eyebrows raised. Cookies were his current nemesis. Anything involving baking, really, but cookies were the thing he wanted to get right. 

"Not after all the trouble it took to shove two twins in that bedroom," Steve said. "Go call Max. I think you've got an apology meal to make." 

The meatloaf was good, but the macaroni had Steve barely restraining himself from making obscene noises at the table. He'd never tell Mrs. Henderson this, but Billy's macaroni was better than hers. Not by much, but enough.

"You should bring this on Thursday," he said, licking the cheese sauce off his fork.

"What?" Billy asked, looking up from where he was intently studying his plate.

"Thursday," Steve said patiently. "You know, Thanksgiving? The reason the lab is all closed up?" Apparently creepy government scientists got leave to go home to their families this week, which was why Billy wasn't there.

"I know what Thanksgiving is, Harrington," Billy said, gripping his own fork hard. "Where should I be bringing something on it?"

"Oh, right," Steve said. "I was meant to ask you earlier. Did you want to come to Thanksgiving at the Byers'? Joyce asked Hop to ask us. I didn't think you already had plans." Max was always over here; Billy never went back to her house. Steve wasn't smart, but he could read between the lines when the spaces were that big.

"Oh," Billy said. His grip on the silverware relaxed, but he started chewing his lip instead. "Uh, yeah. She needs someone to bring mac and cheese still?" 

"I don't know, but Hop said she'd ask us to bring something, and more macaroni is never bad, right?" Steve asked. "Especially this stuff." He shoved another bite into his mouth, moaning and fluttering his eyes. It wasn't as much of an exaggeration as he played up.

Billy snorted. "Sure," he said. "Why don't you call her up and ask her first, though, huh?" 

Steve sighed. "I _guess_," he said. "But if we end up bringing something else, I'm gonna be thinking of this later tonight." He gestured at his plate.

Billy raised his eyebrows, all mock surprise. "Oh, is that why you wanted the bedroom to yourself?" he asked. "Could have told me, you were getting that hard up, pretty boy."

Steve bit the inside of his lip. The pasta suddenly tasted gluey in his mouth. "You know why I wanted the room to myself," he said quietly.

Billy looked down. "Yeah," he said roughly. The room was quiet. Steve suddenly wished Max could have stayed for dinner.

"But, you know," he said, with forced laughter in his tone, "maybe I could use a little privacy."

"Not a bad idea," Billy said, still looking down at his plate. Seemed he wasn't willing to take Steve's peace offering. "You finished? My turn to do the dishes."

It wasn't, but Steve gave his plate up anyway. After that conversation, he didn't really want to be around Billy anyway. As he shut the bedroom door, he heard the sound of one of Billy's space music tapes start up.

* * *

Steve had wondered, last night in the silent bedroom, listening for the sound of Billy's breath and instead hearing only the constant whirr of the furnace, how long he'd leave Billy to sleep on the couch like an unfaithful husband. Turned out that the answer was 'one night'. He'd slept badly, having gotten used to someone else in the room with him, and when he woke up to the sunrise, he'd gone out to see Billy crunched up on their crappy couch, face unhappy, bundled in blankets. Steve's stomach had lurched. Billy was in better shape now than he had been when he got out of the hospital, but he was always going to have some lingering problems. Problems that sleeping in the colder living room, with its big windows, and on a couch with no back support sure weren't going to help. Billy hadn't brought any of that up when Steve had told him that he couldn't sleep in the room. That, more than anything, told Steve that even if Billy was refusing to apologize, he knew he had something to make up for. In the light of day, seeing the lines of discomfort on Billy's sleeping face, Steve didn't feel so unsafe with him any more. What he'd done was wrong, but he'd thought he was protecting Steve. Steve didn't have to worry about him in their home. 

"Billy. Hey," he said, keeping his voice calm and quiet as he knelt down next to Billy. "Hey. You don't look too comfortable," he said. 

Billy's eyes opened slowly. "No shit," he mumbled. "I'm sleeping on the couch."

"You wanna go back in the bedroom for a couple of hours, get some real rest?" Steve asked. 

Billy sat up and shrugged. "Nah, might as well get up," he said, rolling his neck and shoulders until they made an alarming series of pops. "You start the coffee?" 

"Not yet," Steve said, standing up. "Didn't want the noise to wake you if you were going to go back to sleep." 

"Might as well get used to it," Billy said, starting a series of rotating shoulder movements that Steve normally saw before they went to bed if they weren't too exhausted or beat up. "Dunno when I'm gonna get out of the doghouse with you."

Steve sighed. "We're talking about this more later," he said, "but as long as you don't do it again, you can sleep in your own goddamn bed. Now, we've got to meet up with Nancy and Jon to talk about everything later, so do you want coffee or do you want more sleep?" 

"Coffee," Billy said. "Never been a part of the planning gang before. Guess I'll need my wits about me." He smirked. 

"Okay," Steve said. "In that case, I'll make the coffee, and you can make breakfast." Both Billy and Hopper told Steve he brewed coffee to wake the goddamn dead. In both cases, it was a compliment. 

"I thought I was out of the doghouse, pretty boy," Billy said, but he stood up nonetheless. 

"That's pending negotiation," Steve said, smirking, and went into the kitchen to put the water on. 

* * *

"It started out as a regular deer?" Nancy asked, eyes intent on Steve. 

He shrugged. "I mean, it's not like I went in there and did a DNA test, but I'm pretty sure, yeah," he said. 

"But why a deer?" she asked, tapping her pencil on the pad of paper in front of her. "What about deer made them a good subject?" 

"If people are hunting them, there's enough that either a few going missing or a few extra won't raise any eyebrows," Billy said from the corner. They'd all assumed their regular planning positions around Hopper's kitchen table - Nancy and Jonathan next to each other, Steve across from Nancy and Hopper next to him. Hopper had dragged a folding chair out for Billy which Steve had wordlessly switched with his own kitchen chair, and Billy as between him and Hopper, slightly back from the table. 

"Then why just deer? Why didn't they try for other hunting game?" Nancy asked.

Billy shrugged. "Deer are bigger. If you wanted to go for numbers and intimidation factor, that's the animal you'd start breeding with. If they get some weird bodies, it's easy enough to blame it on coyotes or cougars." 

"Deer are prey animals, though," Nancy argued, leaning across the table. "No hunting drive. No teeth and claws. Only the males have antlers. Why didn't they go for mountain lions?" 

Billy leaned his chair back on two legs. "Don't know if you've noticed, princess, but cougars freak people out," he drawled. "When they scream, they're loud. They start going missing or turning up dead, it's a lot harder to explain." 

Nancy sniffed. "Don't you talk down to me, asshole," she said. "I've lived here a lot longer than you." 

"Thank christ for that," Billy retorted. "I don't think any other town could handle you. At least in this one you've got real monsters to take your shit out on."

Unexpectedly, Nancy burst out laughing, and Steve blew out a long breath of relief. He'd hoped they'd get along. 

"I don't know, Chicago is working out pretty well so far," she said. 

"You spend half your time in Chicago with your fingers in the Hawkins bullshit pie," Jon reminded her. The corner of his mouth quirked up in a faint smile. 

"True," Nancy said, sighing. "And some of that is relevant to what you two have brought us." 

"What do you mean?" Steve said, sitting up a little straighter. 

"I've been talking with Murray, and we've both been putting out feelers in the scientific community in the Midwest," Nancy explained. "We have a contact out in Pennsylvania that says hikers have been vanishing off the Appalachian trail. Because the route is so long, they don't get reported missing for months, so it's hard to track how many, but he says at least ten in the last three months. "

"That's a lot of people to up and vanish," Hopper said, arms crossed. 

"Yes, but they're all from different places and they missed check-ins in different cities, so no one's put it together," Nancy said. "The Appalachian Trail begins in Georgia, just an hour or two from where Billy and Steve were. If the place in Madison was really breeding new Upside Down creatures from deer…" She exchanged a look with Jon. 

"They might have moved on to doing the same with humans," Hopper finished. 

"Where is your contact?" Steve asked. 

"We've asked, but he refuses to be involved in the investigation," Jonathan said. "He gave us a place to start, though, and you better believe that after the holiday, we're going to lean on him as hard as we can to get some more information."

Billy and Steve exchanged their own look. "Don't keep us in suspense, Byers," Billy said. "Where are we going next?" 

"Lehighton. It's a little Poconos mountain town." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, y'all. I know I made you think that there was a nice found-family Thanksgiving scene due at the end of this chapter, but... it's not gonna happen. Thanksgiving is kind of fraught for me, so unless I wanted to wait until like, Valentine's Day, it wasn't happening. Maybe sometime I'll put it in as a missing scene in another story in a series.
> 
> Anyway. When I was plotting this story, a friend read what I had, and she said about it, "one of these people is a dedicated survivor and the other is a compulsive protector," and that's something I think about a lot when I'm writing this. It informs my Steve and Billy a _lot_. Neither of them are great future planners! Billy plans enough to get himself out of whatever situation he's in alive. Steve plans enough to get everyone _else_ out of whatever situation they're in alive. And Billy can't understand why Steve isn't looking out for himself. Rest assured, this is something that's going to be addressed more going forward. Just, sometimes, when you live with someone and you work with them, you have to be able to put the conflict down for a little while with the understanding that you'll pick it back up at a better time.
> 
> This isn't a great time of year for me, so updates are probably gonna slow down for a bit. I can promise the next chapter before Christmas, but that's as close to a deadline as I'm willing to give.


	6. Lehighton, Pennsylvania (I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo boy that was a wait, wasn't it? We made it to my personal deadline, but only just. Thanks for being patient.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: Billy uses his coercion powers again (not on Steve, if that helps).

It wasn't the longest drive they'd ever done together, but it was long enough. Sometimes, if it was more than eight hours or so, Steve got to drive the Camaro, feel its power rumbling beneath his hands. But more often, they stopped at a shitty motel. This time, they did neither, Billy so thrilled to be back in his car instead of the truck that he decided to push straight through.

Normally, they were content to fire jabs at each other across the car in between bouts of bickering over music. Conversation didn't come easy this trip, though, the argument still hanging unresolved between them. They had a few aborted attempts before finally falling quiet, Steve passing Billy a new tape when an old one ended. They should really get some books on tape. He was getting tired of the music collection in the Camaro.

Finally, three hours out, Steve bit the bullet. "How long have you been able to hypnotize people?" he asked.

Billy's hands clenched on the steering wheel. "Not long," he said. "It was just little things before. Got the cashier to knock some money off our gas bill when we left Hawkins last week. That was the first time."

"Really?" Steve asked. It had seemed so smooth and planned to him, when he looked back into that fuzzy space in his memory where he'd only wanted what Billy said.

"Yeah," Billy said. "At first I thought maybe I was just a little more charming than usual. Down there…" He shifted in the driver's seat. "Figured it was worth a try. I wanted us both out of there alive."

Steve sat back. It still wasn't… okay, but knowing it was a desperation play made him more likely to cut Billy some slack. He stared out the windshield at the scenery going by for a few minutes.

"We're gonna make a deal," he said finally.

Billy looked over at him, one quick hot glance, interest and vulnerability and more than a touch of irritation. "Oh yeah? Who says?" he asked.

"I say," Steve said. "If we're gonna keep being partners, you gotta swear you're not ever going to do that again."

Billy clenched his jaw, but he nodded. "Okay," he said. "But you have to promise to listen to me better. I wanna get rid of these fucks as much as you do. But you… you're fucking suicidal about it sometimes, pretty boy," Billy said.

Steve felt the sting of that one deep. He clenched his own jaw on his reflexive angry comeback, and instead said, "We'll listen to each other better. And we'll have arguments away from the Upside Down bullshit."

"I can work with that," Billy said. He loosened his white-knuckled grip on the wheel.

"You should tell me when you can do something new, too," Steve said. "I'll work with you better if I know I can shove witnesses who don't wanna talk at you now."

Billy grunted. "You know as well as I do my shit isn't as predictable as your little friend Jane," he said. "But if it comes up again, I'll tell you."

"Good," Steve said. "You know, the hypnotizing thing. You should really practice that. Could come in handy. Might work on monsters."

"You think they have enough of a brain for that to work?" Billy asked.

Steve shrugged. "The kids said that the Hawkins monsters had a hive mind," he said. "If they're like that here, wouldn't that make it easier?"

Billy drummed his fingers on the wheel. "Guess we'll see," he said.

Purplish-red cliffs loomed over them as they drove into the Pennsylvania mountains, dark and shadowy with the setting sun. No matter how much of the country he'd seen over the past year, roads through rockfaces and mountains always made Steve nervous. The ominous color of these didn't help. It made it impossible to forget that they were investigating disappearing people.

The night got darker and darker as they drew closer, the wintery trees hanging spindly branches over the road like fingers, illuminated in flashes in the Camaro's headlights. Like Hawkins, there were no street lights, nothing along the highway but the lights of small towns. At some point, the road under them had become paved with the same stone the cliffs were streaked with. In the close puddle of the headlights, they looked like the color of blood, thick and pouring fast from a deadly wound. The longer he looked at it, the more the cold December air seemed to creep into the car.

They pulled off on a secluded roadside outlook the map said was just outside of town to change into their suits. Missing people over state lines meant they were going to be passing themselves off as FBI. Steve slicked back his hair, and Billy pulled his back into an almost professional tail. He had let his stubble grow out when they learned where they were going, because it let him pass for older - mid-twenties. Steve had a baby face, comparatively, and was stuck passing for twenty-one - the junior agent. They found it worked better that way, let Billy be charming and Steve be earnest and slightly bumbling to earn the trust of the people who didn't fall for the charm. Even if it did grate a little, seeing as Billy was a good six months younger than him.

They crossed into Lehighton just after seven, and Billy pulled into the first gas station he saw. "Well?" he said, smirking, as they both stretched. "Get on it, _rookie_."

Steve rolled his eyes, but headed inside anyway. He smiled at the clerk, a guy probably just out of high school, and pulled his wallet out, making sure to fumble the fake FBI badge as he did. The guy's eyes widened, but when Steve flicked his eyes up and smiled, he visibly tried to play it cool.

"Twenty on two," Steve said, nodding out towards the Camaro. "And a pack of Camel filters."

"Twenty-one fifty," the guy said, and handed Steve back his change before turning to get the cigarettes. "Nice car," he offered.

Steve rolled his eyes again, much more visibly this time. "It's my training partner's," he said. "Swear he cares more about that thing than he does his girl."

"Training partners?" the clerk said, unable to hide his interest as he slid the pack across the counter. "You guys cops or something? Only I thought I knew all the county guys. You staties?"

"FBI," Steve said, flashing his fake badge and cocking one eyebrow like King Steve, back in Hawkins High. "You guys have got some disappearances here. Real interesting little town."

"Disappearances?" the clerk said, frowning. "I haven't heard about that."

"Oh, not locals or anything," Steve said. "Some hikers were supposed to check in here, and they didn't. A lot of them, actually. So we got called in." He leaned against the counter, all hipshot arrogance. "You know anything about that?"

The guy - Brian, his nametag read - shook his head, but there was something… they'd have to come back later, Steve thought. "No, nothing," he said. "That's weird. I hope you find them."

"We'll do our best," Steve said, and did his best to ooze confidence.

Out in the parking lot, the Camaro horn blared. Steve straightened up. "That's him," he said, a little sheepish now. "My training partner. I have to pump the gas, since I'm the junior agent."

Brian made a face. "He can't wait a couple of minutes? You might be investigating."

"He's impatient," Steve said. "Listen, is there a diner or something around here? We've been driving for hours, and I think some food will improve his mood, y'know?"

Brian brightened. "Oh, yeah," he said. "The Boulevard is three streets down, a right on Prince, and left on Blakeslee. If you see an Anna, that's my cousin. Tell her I said hello, she'll take care of you."

"Thanks, man," Steve said, and smiled at him, until the Camaro horn blared again. Then he winced. "Better go," he said.

Brian waved at him, smiling.

"Took you long enough," Billy said, drumming his hands on the wheel.

"What, you're the only one allowed to chat with the locals now?" Steve asked, taking off the Camaro's gas cap with unnecessary fervor.

Billy's eyebrows went up and he stared into the little building. "That's the kind of guy you like?" he asked. "Seems kind of weedy to me."

He was, lanky and thin, but Steve had barely noticed. He made a sound in the back of his throat, wordless disdain. "As if. Guy's just a kid."

"Really?" Billy asked. "Seems like a high schooler to me."

Steve sighed. "Okay, so he's our age," he said, hand on the pump. "But even if we weren't just passing through and he were queer and he was my type - and that's a lot of ifs - I can't fucking imagine dating someone whose biggest concern is keeping his job when I spend half my life killing monsters. I'll have to hook up with a cop or a soldier or something."

Billy snorted. "Who said anything about dating?" he asked. "I was just wondering if he was your type."

Steve shrugged. "I think I'm done with just hookups," he said. "I can't get naked with someone I don't trust any more." He took the gas gun out and rounded the car to get back in. Billy didn't start the car back up again immediately.

"That's a pretty small circle you're limiting yourself to there," he said, rolling a cigarette between his fingers.

"Yeah," Steve said. He knew. It didn't bother him any more. "But I could die any day. I'm not going to waste my time settling for anything less than what I really want."

Billy laughed at that, a genuine one that started in his belly. "Guess you still got the king in you somewhere," he said. "Nothing but the best for royalty."

Steve laughed. "Do you want to go get something to eat or not, asshole?" he asked. "That's what took me so long, getting directions. I'm starving."

"Yeah, let's start with some food and then we can see if this place has a motel," Billy said, finally turning the key in the ignition. He lit the cigarette as soon as they pulled away from the pumps. "So, where am I going?"

The diner was a low brick building that spread out over the edge of a drop-off overlooking a small valley and a much bigger mountain. It was a drive-in too, according to the sign, but they didn't eat in the Camaro unless they were driving hell for leather to catch up with their latest case. Anyway, they could do with a little more room to stretch out. Neither of them were small men and it wasn't as roomy as it could have been inside the cabin.

The interior was a mishmash of diner standard and country chic ripped straight out of a B&B decorated in the sixties. Steve looked around, vaguely horrified, as a waitress - pretty, young, dark curly hair, eyes the same light brown as Brian's from the gas station - came to seat them.

"Anna, right?" Steve said, with a lightning-quick dip of his eyes towards her nametag as she walked them to the table. "We stopped for gas and your cousin sent us over here. Said the food was just what we needed after a long trip."

Anna smiled at him nicely enough, but her attention was clearly mostly for Billy. When she handed them their menus, she leaned close to him and let their hands touch longer than necessary. "That was real sweet of him," she said. "I'll be sure to take good care of you two for him." She faced Billy as she said that.

Billy smirked at him, but Steve didn't much care. After that summer of humiliation at Scoops he'd gotten over searching for validation in female attention. Now he got validation in monster killing, and Anna taking a shine to Billy meant maybe they could get some information. He smirked right back at Billy, the wordless congratulations and go for it he might have given a basketball teammate before the Upside Down invaded his life. Billy's sleazy smile grew.

"I know you will, Anna," Billy said, leaning towards her. "How's the coffee here? Be honest, now." He licked his lips, just the tiniest swipe that would be invisible if you weren't paying attention. Anna bit her lip quickly. Clearly she was.

"For diner coffee, it's pretty good," she said. "Pretty strong, but I like it that way." She let her eyes drop down to Billy's hands.

"Oh, that's not gonna bother us, we're FBI. We survive off late nights with strong coffee," Billy said.

Anna dimpled at him. "FBI? I can't think what we'd have going on here that would bring you out. I don't think the Trainers went that far."

Billy laughed, tipping his head back so the strong line of his throat showed. "Well, I probably shouldn't tell you," he said. "Active investigation and all."

Anna laughed back. "Well, let's see if some coffee and some food will make you a little chattier. The meat loaf's good - or the steak. You look like a man who can put it away." Her gaze dropped, obviously, to the shape of Billy's biceps under his suit.

"You don't have to bring the cream for the coffee, sweetheart," Billy said, "we both take it black. Let us look at the menu and then we might get back to you about what brings us here, huh?"

"I'll hold you to that," Anna said, and winked as she turned away.

"Feel good to have your charm back?" Steve asked in a low voice as he pretended to peruse the menu. He'd known he was going to have the steak sandwich as soon as he saw it.

Billy kicked at him under the table. "Jealous?" he asked.

Steve raised one eyebrow. "What were we just talking about in the car?" he said.

Billy shrugged. "Doesn't keep you from wishing you had my kind of game," he said, smirking.

"I don't need your kind of game," Steve said, closing his menu definitively. "Mine may not work on everyone, but when it counts? I get who I'm going for." He caught Billy's gaze and held it deliberately for a handful of seconds, only looking away when Anna came back with two mugs and a pot.

"We put it on half an hour ago, so it's not been sitting all afternoon," she said, pouring for both of them. "Not fresh, but close enough. You two decide what you wanted?"

"Steak sandwich with fries," Steve said, handing his menu over with a brief, friendly smile to match the one Anna gave him.

"I think I'll have the steak, on your recommendation, Anna," Billy said. "Biggest one you've got, as rare as you can get away with."

"See, I thought you might be that kind of man," Anna said. "Potatoes and limas all right?"

"Just fine," Billy said. "And - wait a minute, before you put that in. Since you had a good recommendation for dinner, maybe you've got a good recommendation for a place to stay. Department wants us in town so they don't have to reimburse us too much for gas. This town doesn't look like it's got too many options, though."

"Well, there's the Mahoning next door," Anna said, thinking. "Sometimes we get space for seasonal workers boarding in a spare room, but it's the wrong season for that. It's not the prettiest, but it's clean. That's pretty much your only option."

Billy grinned at her. "If it's clean and it's in town, it'll do just fine. And if it's next door, maybe we'll see you again. I expect we'll be here at least a week."

"That'd sure be nice," Anna said. "Long case?"

"Lots of people to talk to," Billy said.

"I'm gonna get it out of you," she said, smiling as she took his menu. Their hands brushed again. "Just you wait."

"You're welcome to try," Billy said.

"You really think we're gonna be here a week?" Steve asked, when she'd gone into the back.

"Maybe longer," Billy said. "We haven't dealt with a case where anyone but locals were missing before. It's gonna take time to dig up some leads."

Steve sighed. "You're probably right," he said. "Just hope we're home for Christmas."

They fell into a silence much more comfortable than the one that had surrounded them for most of their drive. Steve didn't feel a need to fill the space up with chatter. He could chatter away at Billy if he wanted, and often did, but Billy was one of the few people he'd had to learn to be all right with silence with. Steve was content to drink his coffee and wait for their food.

It wasn't long. Anna came back in probably ten minutes, bearing two plates. She stopped in front of their table before she set them down.

"What if I said I wouldn't let you have your dinner until you told me why you were here?" she asked playfully. It was a pretty good strategy. They both could smell the meat and potatoes wafting up from the plates.

"Oh, you might as well tell her," Steve said, grinning. "I told her cousin a little when we got the directions here."

Billy frowned at him. "That's not protocol," he said, slipping easily into the senior agent role.

Steve shrugged, chastened but not ashamed. "It's a small town. People are going to know as soon as we start asking questions tomorrow, anyway."

Billy sighed. "True enough," he said. "Anna, why don't you set those plates down and we'll tell you?"

Anna grinned at Steve when she did, the first real smile she'd given him. She didn't say anything, but every line of her body said how eager she was to be let in on the secret - far more eager than she would have been had Billy let it slip when they first walked in. He was good at this kind of playing things out.

"Well," Billy started, leaning in towards her, "this town is pretty close to the halfway point on the Appalachian Trail. Just a couple counties over, really. So some hikers like it for a checkpoint, right? Little less crowded than Cumberland County."

"Yeah," Anna said hesitantly. "I know that. We get a lot of them stopping in for a hot meal."

Billy nodded. "Bet you do, food smells real good," he said. "But we got some reports that at least ten, maybe more, people, were supposed to check in here and didn't. They made it to the museum at Pine Grove Furnace, had that ice cream, and then… never showed up."

Anna's eyes got big. "Missing? In the winter? I hope they have good gear," she said.

Billy shook his head, sad and serious. "It's been a couple of months since the first report," he said. "But they were all natives from all over. The locals had to put it together and pull us in."

Anna put a hand over her mouth. "So… they're dead," she said quietly. "Probably. That's what you're saying."

"I hope they're not," Billy said. "If they aren't, we'll do our best to find them. But what with how long it's been… yeah, some of them probably didn't make it."

Anna took in a deep breath, and drew herself up. "Well, I hope yous find them, alive or… not," she said, her practiced customer service voice falling away. "You're gonna be asking questions tomorrow?"

"If anyone here has seen any of them, even just briefly, it'll be a huge break," Steve said, impressed at the steel in her spine. "We plan on stopping at any food stores, hunting or camping supply, places like that, but if there's anywhere else you can suggest, we'll take it."

Anna shook her head slowly. "Wish I could," she said. "Maybe ask at the motel? They're the only one, like I said, so if anyone wanted a bed for the night, they would have stopped there."

"We'll do that," Billy said. "We'll be stopping by again before we leave, I'm sure, so let us know if you think of anything else."

"I will," Anna said, putting on something that was close to her customer service smile from before. "You boys enjoy your food."

* * *

By mutual agreement, they decided to leave the serious questioning of the motel staff for the morning. Day clerks were friendlier, anyway, and by almost nine at night, most of the housekeeping staff had gone home. So Billy was all business when he got them a room with two double beds.

The Mahoning Inn wasn't the worst place they'd ever stayed in, but it wasn't the best either. The place had been built in the early sixties, by the look of the bathroom, and not much had been updated since. Certainly not the carpet, which made Steve make a note to keep his socks on the whole stay. But it was a bed and a television and basic cable. They settled in for the night after some bickering over the remote for form's sake.

"You never did answer me earlier," Billy said, when they'd settled on some mindless rerun. "What is your type?"

Steve looked over in surprise. "Why do you want to know?" he asked.

Billy shrugged. "I don't have any queer buddies any more," he said. "Not like back in California. Nice to talk about it without pretending sometimes."

Steve felt a stab of guilt. He had Robin, when she was in town, but until he'd said something to Steve, Billy had been alone. Steve had been alone like that before. He didn't like the idea of anyone else feeling like that. He turned over to face Billy.

"Well," he started. "I don't have a physical type, really. Guys or girls. I've liked a lot of different people with a lot of different things going for them. But I guess I like… confidence. And when someone is stronger than they look - physically or personality-wise. Um, I like when they're good at what they do. And when you know where you stand with them."

"Go-getters and ass-kickers, huh?" Billy said thoughtfully. "No wonder you went through half the cheer squad before I got here."

Steve laughed. Put like that, it did make sense. "What about you?" he said. "What's your type, then?"

"Tall," Billy said immediately. "Athletic. Strong hands, nice ass. Can take my shit and dish it back. But the kind of guy who's a little flexible, y'know? Knows I'm bossy and can work with it, won't get too worked up by it."

"Well, let's make a deal, huh?" Steve said. "I'll tell you if I run into someone your type, and you tell me if you run into mine."

Billy laughed. "We spend all our fucking time together, when are we gonna meet people separately, huh?" he asked.

"Could meet someone for work and pass them over," Steve said. "If I run into a nice tall hockey player for you who I think would be into a hookup, I'm playing wingman."

"A hockey player?" Billy asked, amused. "That's what you got out of that?"

Steve shrugged. "Athletic, good hands, nice ass, gotta be good at talking shit and going with the flow. I think that's where you should start your dating pool."

Billy sighed. "Yeah, well," he said. "They're not gonna want to be out, and I'm tired of the closet."

Steve grimaced in sympathy. "Hawkins, though," he said.

"Fuck Hawkins," Billy said. "We're always fucking gone, and when we are there, what's scarier than the bullshit we fight?"

"That's a big change since Madison," Steve said carefully.

"Yeah, well," Billy said. "Maybe you had a good point."

Steve waited, silent. There was more Billy had to say, he could just feel it.

Eventually, Billy sighed. "I can't fucking leave Hawkins for good," he said. "The lab…" He shrugged. "But I'm fucking tired of being scared. I'll be the Hawkins queer. Can't be any freakier than I already am."

"C'mon now," Steve said lightly. "Everything in Hawkins is freaky. You're just not that special."

Billy laughed, and then looked startled that he had. "Guess you're right," he said. He gestured at the TV. "You actually watching this shit or can I turn it off so we can go to sleep?"

"Sure, we can sleep," Steve said. He turned back over as the TV flicked off, leaving the room in darkness but for the moonlight trickling through the curtains. He listened to the mattress creak and the sheets rustle as Billy got settled.

"Hey, Billy?" he said softly.

"Mm?" Billy grunted.

"If it comes to that… we can be the Hawkins queers together."

The other bed was silent. Steve couldn't even hear the familiar sound of Billy's breathing for a few long moments. Then he said, "Don't have to do that."

"Want to," Steve said. When the other half of the room produced only silence at that, he half-whispered, "Goodnight."

"Night," Billy breathed back. The bed squeaked once more, and then he was still.

* * *

The next day didn't go nearly as smoothly as they wished it would. Steve hadn't been expecting an easy job, exactly, because they never were. But missing people or hurt people tended to loosen up the lips of the locals. Every small town they'd been to wanted to believe that they weren't like that, that things like that didn't happen there. They weren't like the big city, Steve and Billy had been told earnestly over and over again. People looked out for each other here.

From what Steve had seen, people were petty and mean and kind and courageous in about the same proportions all over. But he had to cut these people a little slack. Coming to grips with the fact that the little town you'd known all your life wasn't as safe or friendly as you thought was hard.

He wasn't cutting Lehighton much slack, though. So far, all anyone wanted to talk about was the Trainers and their lawsuit and their family spat. If Billy pushed, they'd say how sad they were to hear about those hikers, but they could both tell that as far as the townspeople were concerned, some missing people from hundreds of miles away were none of their concern.

"Could be they got attacked by a bear," one of the men at the sports supply store said.

Steve took a deep breath and didn't remind him that they just had black bears in Pennsylvania, more interested in trash than attacking people for the most part, since he was sure they both knew that. Instead, he frowned and said, "Well, we spoke to the park rangers on the phone first thing, and they just don't think that's likely."

"Look, kid," the other man said, working a lump of chewing tobacco around in his mouth, "it's winter. If they didn't get good gear somewhere else, they're dead already. I know their families want some answers, but you can't exactly expect us to act like it's urgent, huh?"

"Well, sir, the federal government just doesn't see it that way," Steve said. "Thank you for your time." He shouldered his way through the door to where Billy was waiting outside, smoking.

"Any luck?" Billy asked.

"No," Steve said. "Apparently, it's not urgent because they're definitely dead." He ground his teeth together and fell backwards hard against the side of the Camaro, like the jolt could get rid of some of the restless anger coursing through him.

"Watch the paint," Billy chided, but there was no force behind it. "We'll try again tomorrow. Maybe work with my hypnosis or suggestion or whatever." He made a face.

Steve sighed. "Yeah, guess we should take a break."

"Dinner?" Billy asked. "We'll strategize better when we're full. Anna's been the most helpful person in this town so far, anyway."

"Sounds good," Steve said. They'd skipped lunch in favor of covering more ground and he was starving.

Anna was working when they pulled in at the Boulevard, and she elbowed another waitress, one with curly red hair, out of the way to bring them their menus when they walked in. Steve smirked at Billy, ready to rib him about his charm as soon as she walked away, but then he frowned. Anna's smile was just a little bit plastic, kind of strained around the eyes. Different enough from last night that Steve noticed.

"Glad you boys are back," she said, setting the menu down. "Couldn't get enough of the food, huh?"

Billy frowned, skipping the script altogether. "You all right? Someone hassling you?" he asked.

Anna dropped the smile. "Not… exactly," she said. "There's been a stranger hanging round the place for the past hour. Normally wouldn't bother me, but… he's just standing there. Staring. What with what you said about those hikers, it's creeping me out. None of the other girls have noticed, and I don't want them to worry."

Steve and Billy exchanged a look. Casually, Billy leaned back in his seat, flinging his arm out like the macho sleaze he used to be in high school. It angled him just right so he could look through the windows, and his eyebrows flew up before he mastered his expression. On the table, his finger tapped. Morse code. _U. D._

Steve tapped his foot against Billy's quickly. Message received.

"We'll take care of it," Billy said quietly, then raised his voice just a bit. "Much as we'd like to spend our dinner hour with you, my rookie and I have a bunch of case notes to go over tonight, so I guess we'd better get our dinners to go. Two of the house special, would you, sweetheart?" And he smiled at her like nothing was wrong.

It visibly firmed up Anna's spine, and she smiled at them both, a real one this time. "'Course," she said. "Won't be a minute."

In five minutes she was back, holding a plastic bag with two steaming styrofoam boxes. She smiled at them again, the fake one, as she put her back to her interested coworkers. "Here you are," she said. "Don't work too hard now."

"How much do we owe you?" Billy asked, reaching for his wallet.

Anna shook her head firmly. "It's on the house," she said, putting her hand over his. "With all the hard work you two do to keep us safe, I wouldn't feel right charging you."

"But -" Billy protested, and she shook her head again.

"I won't let you pay," she told him.

Steve caught Billy's eye, and lifted his own wallet out stealthily to put a ten on the table. Billy sighed when he saw it, and looked back at Anna, smiling.

"Well, I wouldn't dare argue with a pretty girl like you," he said. "We've got to get going, but you have a nice night."

"You too," she said.

Billy's head went up and his shoulders stiffened as soon as they walked out the door. He was carrying the food, because he didn't need both hands to be dangerous. With his gaze, he pointed out the man that had so unnerved Anna - taller than average, rangy, with thick dark hair - but he needn't have bothered. There wasn't anything visibly unusual about him, but there was something about him that screamed danger.

As they got a little closer, he could pinpoint a little of that. He hadn't turned his head; it looked like he was barely breathing. It disturbed Steve after barely two minutes. If Anna had put up with this for an hour, Steve sharply revised his estimate of her nerve upward. And something about his eyes… they looked darker than normal, almost.

Without that stare, Steve would have pegged the man for homeless, maybe. He was layered appropriately for the cold, but his clothes were worn and dirty in a way that spoke of several nights sleeping in them. But there weren't any holes or patches, and the creased hiking boots on his feet were a brand that was at least a hundred dollars a pair, with soles in good order. Steve frowned, and indicated the boots to Billy with a little up and down flicker.

When they crossed the street, the man's attention snapped to them, and it was ten times worse when the target was closer. He just turned his head; he didn't move or talk or change expression. This was definitely related to why they were here.

"Hey! Buddy!" Billy called out. They stopped about ten feet away, out of easy grabbing distance but close enough to talk. "Wanna tell me what you're doing over here?"

The man was silent. There was no change. He just kept looking at them, focused and intent.

"Man, there's a nice girl in there and she's pretty freaked out," Billy said, voice going low and dangerous. "You better have a good reason for scaring her."

More silence. Despite the cold, a sweat was starting to prickle on the back of Steve's neck.

"I'm fucking warning you," Billy said, bouncing on his feet. But Steve put a hand on his arm and took a step closer.

"Look at his eyes," he said quietly. The man didn't react to their return scrutiny.

"He's not blinking, I guess," Billy said. His voice was still angry, but he'd stilled.

Steve shook his head. "They're dark," he said quietly. "Dark like that buck's shadow."

Billy froze. Carefully, he looked around. It got dark quick in the mountains, but this was the main street. There should have been at least one light. And there was, but he and Steve shared a grim look. It was darker than it should be, and the puddle of light from the diner's windows seemed impossibly far away.

"So, what, you think he's one of the things?" Billy asked quietly, glancing at the man.

Steve shrugged. "I think he's one of the missing hikers," he said. "But I think whatever's happened to him, he can't answer you."

"So, what," Billy bit out, "are we supposed to just let him stare at the place all night? Maybe see if he'll follow us back so we can get our own personal peeping tom?" He was back to bouncing on the balls of his feet again like he was loosening up for a fight.

"Calm down," Steve hissed. "Remember I said you should practice your thing? Your hypnosis or whatever, see if it works on monsters? Now's as good a time as any."

Billy bounced one more time, and then settled. "Right," he said. "Right." He looked down at his hands and clenched them into fists. "I need to be closer, I think," he said. "Never tried it this far away and I don't want to today. Watch my back, huh?"

"Always," Steve said, and took up a wary stance with his hand on his gun, circling just wide enough that he'd hit the missing hiker before Billy.

There was… a ripple in the air as Billy got closer. Not really, but Steve didn't know how else to describe it. Something was happening, and it pushed back the dark just a bit. Steve felt it roll through him without settling, and he breathed in through his nose. The ripple had the feeling of Billy's power to it, something he identified with none of his five senses and yet all of them at once. He knew what it felt like, but this was new. It had the echoes and aftertaste of what he'd shaken off in Georgia, but deeper, harsher. That had been a coaxing, convincing power. This was a command.

Billy sidled close to the hiker, and he was smiling, but there was something more to his usual charm, and when he spoke, the words pushed their way out into the world like the shadow babies had pushed their way out of the doe, making room for themselves when there was none, realer than reality. Steve locked his knees and gritted his teeth against the force of it.

"Hey," Billy said, that same powerful charming smile on. "Hey, what's your name, man?"

The hiker's mouth open, and he finally blinked, clearing some of the dark haze from his eyes. "Ben," he answered, but it was clear he still wasn't all there.

"Where you from, Ben? Why you just standing here staring?" Billy asked, leaning in uncomfortably close. Steve had the uncomfortable realization that he wasn't sure whether Billy was planning to fight him or - well, he knew he was going to fight him, but this was what it looked like when Billy flirted for real, not putting on a show for housewives and tired waitresses.

"I don't know," Ben moaned, sounding drugged or half asleep. "I'm sorry, I don't, don't know." He blinked again, and the dark haze came back.

Billy pushed a little harder, Steve could feel it. "What do you know, Ben?" he asked, almost purring.

"I'm supposed to - to lead you back," Ben said, blinking again, harder. "We want you to _see_."

"Well, I don't go anywhere with strangers, Ben, so I'm not going with you tonight," Billy said. "But how 'bout you go off so you're not scaring these nice people, and you meet us outside of our hotel, tomorrow night at sunset, huh? We won't be strangers then. And then we can see."

"Okay," Ben whispered, nodding like his head weighed a thousand pounds.

"And Ben?" Billy said, voice sharpening, turning on a dime like he always did. "One more thing. You let us alone until we're ready to meet up again. Or else we'll leave and never come back. Never _see_. You understand me?"

"I understand," Ben said.

"Good boy," Billy said, smiling again. "Now go on your way, huh?"

He pulled back, and Steve felt the power pull out of the air with him. Ben's eyes were dark again, and he wasn't blinking. But he did turn and start walking away, out of town, out towards the mountains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge, HUGE thanks to Loq for all the local research. I haven't even used half of what they've given me yet, but the mountains around Lehighton really are a purple-red rock and many of the highways in the 80s were paved with it.
> 
> We're finally making some slow progress on that slow burn! And I'm rapidly catching up with the word count of my other longfic, which is terrifying, because we're probably only 30% done with the story here at this point. Buckle in, y'all, we got a long ride ahead!

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://sirsparklepants.tumblr.com)


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